Institutions that have moved to embrace various online forms of communication-either alumni-only communities powered or publicly accessible communities-are used to the more free-form style of communication common to social networks, rather than the structured, print-like milestones of birth, marriage, childbirth, death.
For example:
The online version of Colgates alumni magazine is a blog, so people can leave comments about articles and one another, said Charlie Melichar, a spokesman for the university. Alumni overwhelmingly are the ones making comments on stories, about faculty, to congratulate a team on victory, he said. Alumni are certainly not just heavy users theyre heavy engagers.
Engagement. That’s long been a goal of the pioneers who adopted email, listservs, and other pre-Facebook forms of online networking and communications. It’s now coming to pass as Millennials, Gen Xers, and even Boomers make applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter an integral part of their work lives, as well as their social lives.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?