Myspace group

TKPhi · #1 01-02-2006, 01:29 PM

I signed up for myspace on New Year's Eve. One of my Nu Delta brothers told me that I would find him and some other Marist graduates there, and indeed I did. Like almost all chapters, many of the brothers were not recorded at IHQ, and I was able to find 2 of them with a few hours of effort.

I am considering adding some sort of function like this to our zetapsi.org website. I have a few objectives: Find lost Zetes and update bad addresses, generate some inter- and intra- chapter chatter, provide a demonstrable product to demonstrate IHQ's return on active's fees, and encourage a connection between brothers that continues past graduation.

Have any of you had a lot of experience with the facebook, myspace, or another such system? Would the actives use it? How about the alumni? Would it accomplish the goals above?

Please let me know your opinion.

TKPhi,
TK

citizensunshine · #2 01-02-2006, 06:55 PM

I think Facebook.com is a more reliable service, and easier to use. MySpace boasts a larger membership roll, though Facebook is catching up, particularly among collegiates.

As far as I know, both services allow you to create a universal group. On MySpace, it's as simple as just making a new community; on Facebook, you have to set up a sponsored group with them, which would probably incur some cost, though likely relatively minor.

I think it's a great idea to have a catch-all for Zetes everywhere. As it is now, there are many groups for individual chapters on these online social networking sites, but I haven't seen a comprehensive one for the whole frat yet.

Lemme know what you're thinking of doing, if you make progress on the idea.

CanadianZete · #3 01-03-2006, 01:35 AM

I have not used facebook myself. I would say 95% of the actives in the Alpha Mu Chapter use MySpace. A few of the younger Elders also use it, and since we have lost contact with most of the older Zetes in the area I'm not sure about them.

I think it makes alot of sence to set something up. Alot of the actives have told me that they have never met another Zete from outside of the area. I think it would help communication between the groups and help strengthen ties. It would be easy to get new initiates to join the group. Just make it part of the biocard registration. If it was mentioned in the UpZete a few times I think it would be used by alot of people. It would be a good way to get new contact info to update the razorsedge database.

TKPhi · #4 01-03-2006, 11:00 AM

That's how I would present it to the Board. Communication, continuing involvement, and keeping those addresses updated are 3 big pushes for me this year. But another big push is to find the classes of 2004-2007, almost all of which were never entered into the database. Some chapters have NO guys from thast class recorded. That's just outrageous, to me.

My hope is that a facebook-like system will find these guys, as their brothers bring them in one by one and create their networks. I'm not sure how it would work out for the job bank ot networking/mentoring aspects of my long-term plan. That's why I'm experimenting with it.

A real big question is, "Will the older alumni use it, or is it too foreign to them?" We have blogs, listserves and websites available to actives and elders, but there are few that use them. I need something the men will use.

That darn bio card, which was written for the old database, should be replaced soon by one which is directly importable into the RE database. The utility is 6 months over schedule. If we go with the facebook-like idea, it will be in use only until the new idea is up & running, which is OK by me.

I'll go look for the Alpha Mu guys on Myspace.

TKPhi,
TK