social networking – Page 69

This being the final day of 2008, I suppose I should do what many bloggers do at this time of year and reflect, or resolve, or predict, or puff on my Meerschaum pipe, stroke my chin thoughtfully and opine about the state of higher education, marketing, PR, the media, Twitter, Facebook, indie music or some other topic I frequently touch on here.

Or maybe I should hike my khakis up a la Matt Foley (video) and toss some motivational bromides your way — tell you to hire good people and get out of their way, or to quit micromanaging, or to be proactive, learn to do more with less, tighten your belts, or lose weight and stop smoking the doobies.

But who am I to dispense advice? Look, I’m a blogger. Even worse, I’m on Twitter. I tweet dozens of times a day. Sometimes I even tweet from my couch while watching a football game. It’s obvious I don’t get out much. I’m the last person you should seek out for advice, or take advice from.

No. I’ll leave the Dear Abby duties to some other blogger. The best I can muster on this final day of the year — and really, isn’t it just a random date? sure, we get the day off tomorrow, and lots of football, but does that much really change after midnight? — the best I can muster is a quick click-through of some things that were on my mind and on this blog in 2008. That, and to wish you a Happy New Year and the best for 2009.

Higher ed marketing’s year in review

January — Predictions that Facebook was on the wane may have been slightly exaggerated, especially considering that I now have more Facebook “friends” from my high school graduating class than I had actual friends in high school. I blame that on the 30-year reunion that took place last summer. Later that month, Judy Gombita of PR Conversations took me to task for bashing Facebook and for being such a Twitterphile. Anyway, if you needed proof that I suck at making predictions, there you have it. The mighty Facebook lives, and I’ve got the high school connections to prove it.

February — A tragic month for higher ed. The Northern Illinois University shooting was front and center for many of us. I posted the news as soon as I found out about it, and that post led to a follow-up about the role higher ed (and other bloggers) play in writing about such tragedies (Blogging about campus tragedy: public service or exploitation?). That same month, a pioneer in crisis communications, Christopher Simpson, lost his battle to cancer at age 52. I also asked, Should universities Tweet?, a question that seems mildly irrelevant today, and I belatedly wished Karine Joly’s blog, College Web Editor, a belated happy third birthday. And early in February, BlogHighEd.org was born.

March — Twitter had its busiest day ever at the height of SXSW Interactive, and as March Madness descended, Drivl.com unveiled the worst Division I mascots ever (h/t The Old College Try). March was the month my reading preferences were validated by Seth Godin, my social networking addiction was clarified, and my long-awaited but brief, superficial review of University Marketing Mistakes elicited this response, among others:

andrew, since it is taking you too long to have the review, may i have a suggestion? Pls make a running review of the book and post it on this blog.

It may seem your patrons may look for other bloggers that can provide it.

You have attracted my attention with your promised review of the book. I guess the best way is for me to buy one.

I guess so.

April — I spoke at and blogged from the CASE Communication, Marketing and Technology Conference in San Diego, where I met a couple of folks who have since gone on to create great higher ed blogs of their own: Paul Redfern of Gettysburg College, who blogs at Higher Ed Web Marketing, and Eduardo Merille of Florida Atlantic University. Caltech’s Liz Allen, who doesn’t blog but should, became my first (and so far only) guest blogger in April with her take on the CASE conference. Also in April, my post about using del.icio.us as a PR measurement tool got some blog buzz, and I got a good fortune cookie at the Chinese buffet.

May — Addict-o-matic and the LOLinator were highlights of the month. Blog fatigue was setting in. But I did manage one serious post summarizing a weighty study about the state of PR.

June — Karine Joly discovered the secret to my amazing YouTube popularity, I co-presented at a PR conference in Baltimore, and went on and on about pitching to bloggers and on Twitter. Tim Russert died, I posted insight from Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley, and rallied higher ed bloggers to represent in the Ad Age Power 150. Well, tried to rally, anyway. Best post of the month: the informafore’s dilemma.

July — Right before Independence Day, I posted mini-reviews of three books marketing and PR types ought to read, shared five videos of a great summertime song, introduced a blog our department created for a big solar car race, and celebrated a Twitter milestone.

August — Posted reflections on Barack Obama’s visit to campus (which happened in July), more crap about Twitter, and Intern Mike’s five takeaways from his summer job in our office.

September — Posted about rebooting my workflow for fall but that’s all I did: read about it. I didn’t do it. Maybe I should try again. New Year’s resolution? More importantly: I blogged about Talk Like a Pirate Day and gave you more cowbell.

October — Took part in Blog Action Day; wrote about beating the recession blues; jumped on the Is blogging past its prime? bandwagon; posted something that I thought was pretty insightful, only to later realize that it was just more blather borrowing from other ideas floating around the blogosphere-twittersphere collective semi-consciousness.

November — Dipped my toe into the analytics waters again with a post attempting to analyze our campus’s spacebook PR campaign and another post looking at Google analytics info for this blog from November 2007-November 2008. Ate turkey for Thanksgiving.

December — Coined the term Facebookgate™, exploiting all of Brad J. Ward‘s investigative work for my own glory. What better or more fitting way to end the year?

Update, 4:45 p.m. CDT: The Chronicle of Higher Education is covering this on its news blog: Company Created Official-Looking ‘Class of 2013’ Facebook Groups for Hundreds of Colleges.

Update: College Prowler CEO comes clean on “Facebookgate” in comment on Brad J. Ward’s blog.

Brad Ward just Tweeted the news that College Prowler CEO Luke Skurman ‘fessed up to his company’s being the force behind the Facebook shenanigans I (and many other bloggers) wrote about earlier today. Skurman promises to remove the interns involved in this scam from the Facebook pages. Here’s the full text of what Skurman posted on Ward’s blog, Squared Peg:

Yes, College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site. No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts.

Until about an hour ago, I was unaware that College Prowler was working with another company that may have been using fake aliases to create to these groups. The groups that College Prowler was responsible for creating were set up with real accounts. Here are the names that are associated with College Prowler, and they will all be removed immediately from the Class of 2013 groups(all other names are not controlled by College Prowler):

• Mark Tressler
• Ron Tressler
• Brenna Young
• Lisa Young
• Lauren Plavchek
• Jessica Lash

From a big picture perspective, having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.

Feel free to email, luke@collegeprowler.com, with any additional concerns or questions.

Original post:

I want to nominate Brad J. Ward for the Pulitzer Prize for Social Media Journalism for his exposure of the fake Facebook Class of 2013 ring.

Those words from Tim Nekritz in a Twitter post Thursday evening in admiration of Brad Ward‘s investigation of some apparent skullduggery in the realm of Facebook.

Brad has dug up some disturbing information about some possibly fraudulent activity on Facebook that could involve your school’s incoming freshman class.

According to Brad’s investigation, a cadre of Facebookers are either setting up unofficial “Class of 2013” pages that purport to represent various colleges and universities, or they’re joining already-established pages and becoming co-administrators. (These types of pages are usually created by students who have been accepted into a college and want to start networking with their fellow classmates-to-be. Some colleges and universities encourage the development of these pages, while others just let it happen.) Brad discovered that certain names appeared over and over again in the category of page administrator for many of these pages. In his post, Brad suggests that someone — or some organization, or group — has set up a ring to create Facebook pages in order to connect with “easily 1,000,000+ freshman college students.”

Think of it: Sitting back for 8-10 months, (even a few years), maybe friending everyone and posing as an incoming student. Think of the data collection. The opportunities down the road to push affiliate links. The opportunity to appear to be an ‘Admin’ of Your School Class of 2013. Alumni down the road. The list of possibilities goes on and on and on.

Could this be a scheme for identity theft? For gathering market data? For something else entirely?

Leveraging the power of the Internet and his own higher ed network (Brad is well-connected via Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.), and using collaborative tools like Google Docs, Brad’s investigation now involves some 15 others in higher ed. At last check, this team had identified some 300 of these Facebook groups with administrators who were connected (follow along on the Google Docs spreadsheet Brad has set up for tracking purposes).

Early, early this morning, Brad posted an update to “reasonably confirm that College Prowler is behind the mass creation of ‘Class of 2013? groups on Facebook.”

A bit later, he added:

Searching these names on Google, my colleagues found several direct connections to College Prowler via LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and more. Perhaps the most disheartening tidbit we found was a post spread across the US on Craiglist. Here is an example of a local ad put out for a ‘Facebook Marketing Internship‘.

“Viral Marketing Internship (Spring Semester)
An internship that combines the addicting glory of facebook with viral marketing? It’s true. College Prowler Inc., the Pittsburgh-based publisher of the only complete series of college insiders’ guides written by students, is actively seeking an unpaid viral marketing intern who has a solid understanding of the web, social networking, and interactive marketing.
Responsibilities
– Implement Facebook marketing campaigns that will engage high school and college students
[…]
Hours: 15 hours per week
Salary: Unpaid, internship credit

UNPAID to do the dirty work. What a shame.

I am not here to say that College Prowler is a bad company. There was obviously a business motive behind the decision to create 250+ Class of 2013 groups. Unfortunately, we may never know that decision now that this has been brought into the light by the higher ed community.

Yes, Tim, I agree. If they give out Pulitzers for social media investigative journalism, then Brad deserves to be considered.

Stay tuned to Brad’s blog for more updates, and get involved yourself if you suspect something’s rotten with your Facebook Class of 2013 page.