FaceBook … Big Stuff

The FaceBook … if you are in education you know what it is.  If you are in tech, you know what it is.  FaceBook is a social networking service that about 85% of the college student population uses.  A quick survey of my class this semester showed me that 44 out of 45 students were in the FB.  It is amazing how much time and energy students give to their entries and it shows me that with the right mix there are things we can do to design killer experiences:

• One thing is to make it easy to connect to others.  LMS tools do not do this.  They are positioned as a teaching tool first and only … that is shame as I would love if it my students spent some real time inside our learning spaces.
• Make features they want … right now our CMS/LMS has dropboxes, messageboards, quizzes and all the htings I want as a teacher but nothing for them.  There isn’t a place to connect with others outside of email, you can’t leave quick messages for anyone, and the chat stuff is just so old school.

I am not saying we should be using the FB for our learning spaces, but there are real lessons there.  I just read a quick article over at Techcrunch in which they saw FB is pulling 1 million a week via advertising revenue and are in the process of openning the service up to some corporations.  Amazing.  Can you imagine having access to a friend of a friend toolset inside a huge company!  Now think about how a big company could use it to post jobs and capture the attention of almost all the college kids in the country … adding that on top of social networking would be mighty interesting.  At any rate, I am up to 30 or so friends so I am not as pathetic as I once was … ok, maybe I am but at least I am in the Book.