Category: twitter

Friday Five: higher ed odds and sods

Important stuff about Twitter, LinkedIn, Unigo, rankings and geeks

While I slack, other higher ed bloggers and news outlets have been cranking out some good stuff. Here are five recent posts you should check out:

  1. 10 reasons to monitor Twitter. Fellow Twitter junkie Brad J. Ward‘s list is solid. And he offers examples, straight from the tweeters.
  2. A case study on setting up a LinkedIn alumni group. Last spring I posted about Caltech’s use of LinkedIn to connect with alumni. Kyle James picked up and ran with the idea. Here, he details how Wofford College set up their own LinkedIn group.
  3. Creating the college anti-rankings. Inside Higher Ed reports on the Education Conservancy‘s creation of College Speaks, “an explicitly anti-rankings system for the college search.” A prototype was presented Thursday at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling Conference in Seattle. (The Education Conservancy is best known for campaigning against the “reputational” surveys used by U.S. News & World Report for its rankings.)
  4. Sam Jackson extols the virtues of Unigo. Unigo is the latest player in the college search game but it leverages the power of social networking by involving students. It launched last week with 225 colleges and universities and 30,000-plus reviews. Jackson was involved in its creation so he has an insider’s perspective.
  5. MIT: We’re not all geeks. Really. This MIThBusters video protesting the MIT nerd stereotype may have had the opposite effect. According to the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog, “the video frustrated one of MIT’s most-famous geeks, Henry Jenkins, a co-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program.” He ranted on his blog: “Most of the folks they depict still come across looking like geeks, not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

Pretty-well-known fact by now: Sarah Palin meme overtakes Twitter

Following John McCain’s announcement of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on Friday, a “little-known fact”* meme spread like crazy over Twitter. The Austin American-Statesman helped spread the news beyond the twitterverse.

Little Known Fact: On Friday, Sarah Palin became an online phenomenon.

Moments after news outlets began putting the spotlight on the Alaskan governor who is John McCain’s running mate, users of the microblogging service Twitter.com began posting tidbits about Palin’s political views, her family and anything else they could find online.

Things soon took a silly turn. Remember the fanciful “Chuck Norris facts” that were the height of Internet humor a couple of years ago? (“Chuck Norris counted to infinity — twice. Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.”)

Palin became the subject of a new version of this running joke. Among the funniest “Little Known Facts” about Palin:

“Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin CAN touch MC Hammer.”

“Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin is Batman.”

“Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin has a brother in England who is a professional fish-slapping dancer.”

“Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin invented SPAM.”

“Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin was a ghost the WHOLE TIME!”

And then there’s this one, which may explain the joke’s appeal:

“Little Known Fact: Even Sarah Palin didn’t know who Sarah Palin was until today.”

According to this collection of the little-known facts as they are posted in real time, Twitter user @MichaelTurk started the meme and has his own site, Palinfacts.com, devoted to the topic. A few of Turk’s gems:

  • Sarah Palin isn’t allowed to wield the gavel at the convention because they’re afraid she’ll use it to kill liberals.
  • Sarah Palin once one a competitive eating contest by devouring three live caribou.
  • Sarah Palin once carved a perfect likeness of the Mona Lisa in a block of ice using only her teeth.
  • Sarah Palin will pry your Klondike bar from your cold dead fingers.
  • Sarah Palin pick retroactively makes the theme of #DNC08 “Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead”
  • Sarah Palin doesn’t need a gun to hunt. She has been known to throw a bullet through an adult bull elk.

My favorite take on this meme comes from @kopper:

Little known fact: Sarah Palin has never been rickrolled. http://tinyurl.com/palin69

* Little-known fact (in the Twitterverse, anyway): “little-known” is a compound modifier and therefore should be hyphenated.