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I’ve co-authored a white paper with Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures: Alumni Networks and Twitter: An Update. This white paper represents a fresh look at content we produced a year ago analyzing alumni networks and Twitter. When we wrote the first paper in January 2009, Twitter was very new and hadn’t gained much penetration in higher ed (or elsewhere). As you are likely aware, Twitter grew exponentially in the past 12 months and underwent some changes – this new, updated white paper reflects on those changes and poses some questions for the future.
The white paper also compares data from a survey we conducted back in 2009 with one we conducted last month, which takes a look at the ways in which alumni associations have implemented Twitter, including lists, a recently introduced feature.
Download Alumni Networks and Twitter: An Update (705kb PDF) >>
Tweet about the White Paper and share this info with your followers >>
Please leave your comments here, or post them to Andy’s blog. We hope you find it useful!
It’s been one year since Andrew Shaindlin of Alumni Futures and I published a white paper on Twitter and Alumni Relations. What’s changed? You tell us.
Last year, we conducted a survey to find out more about those in the world of education, alumni relations and advancement: who is using Twitter, how often, and for what purpose. We’re polling folks again to see how things have changed.
Please take a moment to fill out the survey by clicking this link >>
I’ll post the new white paper, Alumni Networks and Twitter –An Update, on this blog in February.
I’m from Eureka, a relatively rural town of about 30,000 people in Northern California. For those of you unfamiliar with the foggy, green, quiet town where I was born and raised, here’s a map.
Saturday afternoon, Eureka was hit with a 6.5 earthquake. The majority of my extended family still lives in Eureka, and I was very concerned. Not only about the potential for earthquake damage, but about the potential for a tsunami (there was one up there in the 60s, and it killed 11 people). My sister and I weren’t able to reach our Mom and Dad right away; cell signals were dead and land lines were unreliable.
So how did I get details about what happened and how the town fared? From the Internet, of course.
But not from online newspapers. No, I got my info from my Facebook network and from Twitter:
Mind you, these posts are from Facebook friends who don’t even live in Eureka any longer, but they had spoken to their respective families. This at least reassured me that Eureka wasn’t underwater, or complete rubble.
Twitter gave me some other pieces to the puzzle as well, thanks to the #Eureka hashtag (search it now for ongoing info). Even Mashable was running a story that featured user @amyeureka’s Twitter photos of the aftermath.
Thanks to all of these, I was able to at least get some idea of the current status: no reported deaths, no tsunamis, no obliterated buildings. Just a lot of broken glass, toppled bookcases and broken chimneys. I could make a somewhat reasonable assumption that at least my family was alive, though maybe missing a few picture frames and glassware. And I wouldn’t have obtained that information from broadcast news or the paper.
The good news? I was finally able to make contact with my family: thankfully, the only casualty at Mom and Dad’s was a television.
