CASE Conf. Fundraising for Graduate and Professional Schools

Live from CASE in California! This ought to be a very exciting and informative couple of days. The agenda is packed with great sessions…now it’s about time to get the show  going!

Check out pix from the event!  That’s Leigh Perry, conference co-chair and Anne Marie Michel, presenter,  with the macow.

Check out Currentslatest edition–virtual community and alumni relations?!  gee what a topic…somebody ought’a talk about it…

Mobile Marketing–Hey wanna buy a car?

…then sms this number…

Peugeot  introduced its latest model–the biggest thing to happen with it in a decade–with a multimedia campaign, relying heavily on WAP and SMS. Results?  50% of those who interacted with it ordered a test drive.  1 in 5 visited the WAP site, according to the story @ moblie marketing magazine.  The folks at Peugeot say that in TV only campaigns the time from launch to decision to visit showroom can be 3 months.  In this effort it took 20 minutes.

Sure a buying a new car isn’t the same thing as investing in an education…among other things the car’s usually much cheaper…but can we ignore this trend?

Cell phone Apps

NYT gets  hip for turkey day with some cool apps for mobile phones…wanna call internationally for free?…free 411?  read on... and don’t eat too much!

What Features are they looking for?

Karine Joly on her terrific blog, www.collegewebeditor.com, posts a report on a new study of what prospective college students look for in admissions web sites. As she puts it, this list makes for a good “to do” or at least wish list for your admissions site.

This got me curious about what various instituions are currently offering in terms of features on their sites, so I’ve launched a survey: Admissions Site Survey. Click over and take it! I’ll update this site with general results, and email greater detail to all who take part in it.

sent from phone

Well it works! Am posting this frm mobile. While nifty I think www.blogmailr.com ability to tie n2 outlook is its best feature.

Web 2.0 New App

Am giving blogmailr a try from my online email account. This
new web 2.0 app is supposed to allow one to post blogs from any
email sending device…I’ll give it a shot with my phone next.
db

User Generated Content Sites surge…flight to virtual “burbs” good for Higher Ed sites…

 

Neilsen reported in August that 5 of the top 10 fastest growing web sites consisted of user generated content: ImageShack, Heavy.com, Flickr, MySpace and Wkipedia all ranked in the top 10 with increases in unique audiences from July 2005 to July 2006 ranging from 181% to 233%.  The folks @ Neilsen choose not to count Partypoker as a user generated content; I think one might argue that it is.  If so, then 6 out of the top 10 would be UGC sites.

 

Interestingly we’re also reading stories of wide spread flight from the giant sites.  Print and TV media (in case you’ve missed them) have been gleeful in reports of users who report being frustrated with the mass market sites such as MySpace. 

 

This comes as no surprise to Web 2.0 folks such as Ellyssa Kroski who blogged back in April her expectation that with time people would grow tired of the giant communities and look for small groups that offered some filter on the noise of “online friends.” When you consider it, this trend differs little from community life in the non-virtual world.  While some people are drawn to the whirl of the big city, others seek out the order of the suburbs or quiet of rural life—others choose to spend their weekdays in the city and then retreat to quieter realms on weekend. As social networking becoming a more ubiquitous part of online life, we can expect many users to seek communities of Goldilocks just right proportions—enough people I am interested in networking with and not too many. 

 

Higher Education web communities possess the potential of offering just the sort of place many people are likely to seek—large enough to provide variety for both personal and professional interests, while not encompassing the globe.  It’ll be interesting to see how things go.