So as I've mentioned before I've set up a PG Facebook group to encompass students and recent alums. It can be found here, and we've got about 40 students and alums on it. Since we have over 170 majors and minors, I'm hoping to ramp that up.
The current strictures on Facebook are such that alums outside of the UPS email address who are P.F.E. (Pre Facebook Era) can join Facebook itself but can't join our PG group. So for most alums, my apologies--I hope that Facebook will create more flexible mechanisms for people to opt in to groups in future, or I may reconstitute the PG group on a "global" setting if there is in fact much interest in it. For now, if you are on Facebook but outside our network, please link to me directly. My personal Facebook profile is here.
To that end, I had an interesting time asking students in one of my PG102 Introduction to Comparative Politics sections about the social differences between Facebook and MySpace; they made really thoughtful observations about age and even class differences that can cut across these groups. Facebook reminds me of a more freewheeling LinkedIn, and I remain convinced that these kinds of online social networks will just get more powerful in future. My hope is that Facebook, like LinkedIn, will help generate webs of connections between our students and alums that can be tapped for support during and after college.
Thoughts, suggestions, let me know.
