social networking and college football

ESPN published the first of a 4 part series yesterday looking at the "impact of online social networks on college athletics", and it's a fairly interesting low-tech peek into how high-tech tools are being used by low-tech coaching staffs. John Calipari, who recently became the Basketball coach at the the University of Kentucky, is a particularly good example. An admitted "technophobe", Calipari is the most followed college coach on Twitter (@UKCoachCalipari) with over 350,000 followers, but apparently doesn't quite grasp the process. So he texts his tweets to his Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations, who then updates the Twitter account.

I think I'll start applying for Associate Athletic Director of Media Relations positions.

It's also interesting to see how slow the NCAA has been to address social networking. College coaches face a mountain of regulations on the manner in which they can contact potential high school age recruits. They are severely limited in the number of times they can make phone calls, or send correspondence through the mail. In 2007, the NCAA prohibited texting. There is no limit, however, to a coaches ability to direct-message on Twitter, and to send private messages on Facebook. Even if those messages are received by the recruit on their phone. And even if, as in Calipari's case, those tweets originated as texts anyway.

social networking and college football

the new FriendFeed just made my day

The blogs are a-buzzing today with news of the beta release of the 'new' friendfeed site, with it's associated shiny look, feel and features. The common refrain seems to be that it's a lot like Twitter. According to ReadWriteWeb in fact, direct FriendFeed updates automatically copy to Twitter by default...but my experience this afternoon indicated otherwise. Mashable too seems a little overly distracted by the visual resemblance to Twitter, advising that the new FriendFeed "feels a lot like a web-based Twitter client" except that you get to see "your friend’s activities from the dozens of different services that FriendFeed supports."

And it seems the forest is being lost for the twees. (sorry)

That distinction is what makes FriendFeed so impressive, and what separates it from the pack, in my opinion. It's an aggregator, of pretty much everything you use on the web (pix from Flickr, status updates from Facebook, Tweets, blog posts, RSS, etc). It's also now updating in real-time (by default, but pause-able). There's also no character limit meaning that you can post intelligent updates without having to use 'text-speak'.

Honestly, I've been a casual FF user, and mostly through a feed to my iGoogle page. But this new design could pretty easily convert me. The biggest obstacle for me is that I'm not sure if it'll have enough mainstream appeal to convert the masses.

the new FriendFeed just made my day

Facebook PR faux-pas Part II

Facebook has once again folded to pressure from the masses, and is tweaking their recent (and unpopular) design update. The full apology was posted here.

My position is that updates are ALWAYS going to be unpopular, because most people hate change. And people will ALWAYS complain. But Facebook is now giving those whining voices far too much credibility...

I'm conflicted about these new proposed changes though, because I actually support them. I desperately want to de-myspace my feed, by weeding out all of the application junk (My Redneck Name, My 5 favorite movies, Where should I live quiz, etc). And I expect that I'll like the auto-update feature.

All Facebook needed to do was phrase this update differently, to disguise the changes as improvements that were in the natural development pipeline...not in response to the 300k Facebook uses who signed the "I hate the new FB Design" application. Ultimately, massive public collaboration is anathema to innovation.

I liked it when Facebook was innovative enough to know what was good for me before I did.

Facebook PR faux-pas Part II

Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media

Really good post on Mashable about the challenges big brand companies face in adopting 'new media' as a business channel. The second bullet particularly really resonates (and probably isn't limited to just large organizations). Where does your social media expert fit?

Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media

Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media