Another Social Network? Maybe.

Article on Mashable about Campus Buddy, “an academic-based social network linking students to classmates and others on campus.”

Personally, I’m still struggling with the whether schools should be creating their own social networks. Facebook already has the critical mass, and includes apps that will let you update your schedule. As a user of a few different networks, my instant reaction is, “do we really need another social network?” But this article got me thinking.

It may make sense to create you own network if it:

1. Adds enough extra value to make it compelling for students to participate. The interesting thing about Campus Buddy is that it provides official grade distributions broken down by professor, course, department and campus. And according to their site, they’ve already analyzed grades from hundreds of universities. You’re not getting that on Facebook (except of course, you are if you’re using CB).
2. Can be integrated in some way with the networks students are already using. Another interesting feature is that you use your FB login to access it. There’s also a FB app that allows you to use Campus Buddy in Facebook.
3. Can be integrated into the fabric of everything else you’re doing on the web. There are department pages that show the courses, professors and students in a department. Part of the challenge with maintaining a college site is that while we know that prospective students look at department pages as part of their decision making process, those pages often don’t reflect what’s actually happening in the department. With something like this, a prospective student could potentially be given selective access to courses, professor ratings, average grade distributions, and students who are in the department. There are probably also ways to tie into the course management system.

Anybody have some experience with CB or something similar? Drop me a line, I’d love to hear how its working.