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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Should UVa's Office of Admission have a presence on Facebook?



facebook Originally uploaded by annieee
When I first joined Facebook, I thought it was neat. I saw it as a way for people in a college/university community to communicate without all the "sketchiness" of other social networking websites. When the idea of having an official UVa Admission presence on the site came up a few times, I toyed with the idea, but saw Facebook primarily as a student site. I was kind of indifferent about having an official profile for the Office of Admission. If it was deemed important, I'd create it, but I wasn't particularly enthused by the idea.

That opinion was formed back when a .edu email address was required for membership. These days, it seems that Facebook has exploded in the same way that MySpace did. Third party applications dominate the site and people with an anonymous Gmail account can sign up and get a profile. It looks like a very different site and while some features are great, others impede navigation and clutter pages.

Today, The Chronicle's Wired Campus blogger writes about one professor who has written a blog entry predicting that this the year of Facebook's demise (he goes on to talk about positive effects of Facebook). He writes about the things that Facebook users probably find tedious about the current state of the site.


What do you think? Do you think we (UVa Office of Admission) should have a formal presence on Facebook? Do you think Facebook is falling out of favor? If so, what site might fill in that space for students?