Busy busy busy week… and I’m not really even sure why? I’ve got some really good projects and posts in the work to share if I can only find time to complete them and then write about them.

This week saw an interesting article in the Chronicle, Colleges Create Facebook-Style Social Networks to Reach Alumni.  You have to have a subscription to read the full article but Andy Shaindlin at Alumni Futures gives us a summary and a deeper understanding of the complicated issues around universities creating social networks, Should Universities Create Facebook-Style Social Networks?.  Kevin Prentiss at Swift Kick Central also had plenty to add, Please Stop Buying and Building Walled Gardens For Higher Ed.  I wish that I had access to read the full article and then time to respond, but instead I definitely recommend reading these articles and better understanding the situation.  Maybe I’ll get around to the library and see if they have a copy.  Social Networking is definitely creating some buzz, but it is also very complicated and there is a lot to understand to do it correctly.  This is something I definitely need to come back to when I have more time.  In the mean time I’d love to hear more reactions to this story and response posts.

Guest Bloggers Wanted

I added a contact form to the site last night and something I would like to explore is guest bloggers. If you are interested in writing a guest blog on .eduGuru please contact me through the form or any of the other channels and I’d love to explore your idea.

Now onto the weekly links!

• Learn SEO Basics in 10 Understandable Segments - WebmasterRadio.FM’s “Webcology” have teamed up with WebProNews to deliver a fantastic 10-part series on Search Engine Optimization and marketing in general.
• Google Now Lets You Place Ads On TV - Google AdWords is launching Google TV Ads, an all-digital system that lets you place your ads into TV program. The service has been available as a trial program for over a year now, and now Google has opened it up for everyone.  Long term this is a game changer, mark my word.
• The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet - Great PDF SEO cheatsheet from SEOmoz
• A Sociologist Says Students Aren’t So Web-Wise After All - An interesting study about the findings of college freshman and there web skills.
• Nevermind The Recession, The Web Will Change The World! - Are we about to enter into a recession, and if so does that mean an end to the current ‘web 2.0′ era of innovation in web technology?
• Social Media Marketing for Small Business - Social Media 101, if you are struggling to present this concept to any of your supervisors, this is a great piece that explains it.
• Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide - Social media expansion is important because this provides foundations for broader / faster mindshare, along with supporting your search engine marketing objectives. You *can* convert traffic if you target appropriately (research needed), and do not spam.
• Let’s Talk Landing Pages - SEOmoz gives us 26 suggestions and tips for your landing pages in this post. Good stuff.
• Quantcast: The Next Generation Of Media Research - The takeaway line: When publishers ask me if they should do this, my reaction is always, “Why wouldn’t you do it?” It’s free and Quantcast is going to report on the site anyway.
• Plan Your Internet Marketing Strategy Before Launching Your Website - So, the lesson is: before you build your website, create your online marketing plan first.
• Not Using Tweetscan to Manage Your Brand? You’re Not Doing Your Job - Don’t know if this has any value for higher education yet, but here it is anyway. The work-to-reward ratio of using a Twitter search tool is one of the best you’ll find in this age of information overload. If you’re not already on top of it, get started, and let us know about your success stories.
• How Best to Submit Our (Or Any) Stories to Digg - Some useful tips to think about when submitting content to Digg, or any social bookmarking sites for that matter. Sometimes it makes sense to edit the title and not simply steal the description directly from the page.
• The 10 most important technologies you never think about - Without these technologies our world would be a very different place. The late sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
• Morgan Stanley’s March Internet Trends Report: Social Applications Dominating - Morgan Stanley ’s Internet Trends report from last month takes a big turn from previous reports - the focus is nearly 100% on social applications and how they are taking over the Internet (Yahoo apparently read it).
• Still Confused with Flash SEO? 10 Points to Convey Better - Google now indexes some aspects of flash content but not everything. This article describes exactly what Google tells us it can index and its limits.
• Trendpedia (beta) - Social media monitoring, buzz tracking, brand measurement and blog trend search - Trendpedia is your free entry in to what’s Buzz in the Blog-o-sphere.