University Business - February 2008 - (Page 65)

INTERNET TECHNOLOGY Facebook Applications: The Game Changer? New ways higher ed institutions can use social networking By Karine Joly N NOVEMBER 2007, FACEBOOK launched a series of new features including “Pages,” which allow colleges, universities, and other schools to create a presence and recruit “fans” among the users of the popular social networking website. Until then, institutions as well as organizations, big companies, or even small businesses were not really welcome on the popular college student online hangout. All were barred from setting up a user proﬁle by Facebook’s terms of use. Some institutional oﬀenders even had their accounts taken down, losing all the connections established over time with their Facebook “friends.” Before Facebook Pages, institutions could only set up groups, the same groups used by the aﬁcionados of the wildest beer parties or the proponents of the weirdest campus causes. Within a month after the launch of the new feature, more than 700 Facebook Pages were created by institutions, alumni associations, university oﬃces, and college departments. What are the reasons behind this impressive adoption rate? Facebook Pages don’t cost a dime, are quick to create, and are easy to maintain. As a result, investing a couple of staﬀ hours to Facebook is a no-brainer. That’s probably why higher ed institutions have adopted a more conservative approach with Facebook Platform. Launched at F8, an event in San Francisco organized last May by the company, Facebook Platform opened windows of opportunity for IHEs. In a press release, the social networking website was “calling all developers to build the next generation of applications with deep integration into I Colleges and universities could leverage the medium to create some robust tools for students. Facebook, distribution across its ‘social graph,’ and an opportunity to build new businesses.” Six months later, this call had been answered more than 13,600 times with third-party applications fully integrated into the social networking website, engaging 60 million users on a daily basis. How many of these have been authored by university developers? Just a very, very small portion. In mid-December, a search for “university” and “colleges” among listed Facebook applications returned fewer than 200 applications, and most of these had been developed by private third parties. STUDENT INTEREST GROWS In the meantime, the incredible success of the ﬁrst Stanford class covering Facebook applications last fall proved there was a real interest among students, the media, and even venture capitalists for these applications. Taught by BJ Fogg, Dave McClure, and Dan Ackerman-Greenberg, “Creat- ing Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook” was one of the most popular computer science classes oﬀered at Stanford that semester. KissMe, a Facebook viral hit with more than 2 million installations as of mid-January, were designed by students enrolled in this class. Chris Mocko, one of the Stanford students behind the KissMe application, believes that any application can achieve success, whether it is a mindless one that simply sends kisses to friends, or an educational one that provides more intrinsic value to the user. According to Mocko, the most important rule of thumb for all application developers is to keep things simple. “When KissMe reached 100,000 users, I was shocked at how such a simple application became so popular,” he says. Success on Facebook Platform requires a very reﬁned and to-the-point user experience. Fred Stutzman—a PhD student at the School of Information and Library Science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has researched identity, social software, social technologies, computer-mediated communication, and more speciﬁcally Facebook—thinks colleges and universities could leverage the medium to create some much-needed, robust tools for students. “However, I would encourage a careful design process. Simply because an application is in Facebook does not mean it will be successful,” he points out. Karine Joly is the web editor behind www .collegewebeditor.com, a blog about higher ed web marketing, public relations, and technologies. She is also a web editor for an East Coast liberal arts college and a consultant on web projects for other institutions. universitybusiness.com February 2008 | 65 http://www.collegewebeditor.com http://www.collegewebeditor.com http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - February 2008

University Business - February 2008
Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Future Shock
Independent Outlook
On the Hill
Facilities Focus
Cover Story: Orientation Rites: Seal the Deal
A Sense of Security
Growing the Giving Tree
Are We Covered?
Baby Boomers, Back to Campus
Internet Technology
What's New
Calendar of Events
End Note

University Business - February 2008