WildBlueSkies – Trends and strategies in Digital Media

Alumni magazines serve many purposes. They highlight the news and research at their institutions, and serve as prettied-up fund-raising vehicles. But their main appeal – as dormitory common rooms for grown-ups – has increasingly been usurped by Facebook and similar Web sites, says the New York Times.
The rise of social networking on the Internet has created a quandary for these magazines, which want to maintain a conversation with alumni but have been slow to embrace the Web, leading the younger alumni, accustomed to second-by-second updates from friends and classmates, to exchange information in real time on Facebook and MySpace or even via Twitter.
This is leading colleges to rethink how to keep in touch with their alumni. While Harvard has taken a hybrid approach, universities like the University of California, Los Angeles, have rid themselves of their printed class notes. The online version of Colgate’s alumni magazine for instance, is a blog.
For some universities, privacy related to the class notes is an issue, but a generation weaned on the Internet is also used to sharing more, and hence the needs, as regards a platform requires a rethink.
It would probably serve universities better to have groups within existing social networks such as Facebook and YouTube for its alumni to congregate, and tie it all up with a virtual layer, the kind that Nanhi Kali had released.

Related posts:

1. Web Beats Magazines In Grabbing Men’s Eyeballs
2. Now Search Magazines On Google Book Search
3. Big Win For Gmail = Big Blow For Microsoft ?
4. Facebook Crosses 350 Mln Users, To Remove Regional Networks
5. Facebook Opts For Crowdsourcing, Raises Hackles

Filed under: Digital culture, Trends