The links are coming to you a little early this week because I’m taking tomorrow off to fly to NYC for the day.  Yeah I know it’s crazy to fly up to NYC for the day, but sometimes that’s just how I roll!  So why am I flying up to NYC for the day?  Well a buddy of mine has four tickets to the Yankees vs Mets game.  It’s a once in a life time opportunity and the last year to catch a game in the “House that Ruth built”.  As some of you know I’m a die hard Braves fan so naturally I’m not a Mets fan and I believe the Yankees represent everything that is wrong with Baseball as they just go out and buy pennants.  I guess I will be pulling against both teams! 

Before I get to the links there are two blog posts that are definitely worth point out.  William & Mary senior Andy DeSoto first started the conversation with his post, Social media for colleges and universities.  Although this post stands out on it’s own the conversation stepped up a little with Social Media blogger and ReadWriteWeb contributor Corvida followed up with her own post, Universities Need To Take Control Of Their Online Brand.  As I’ve written a ton about Social Media and Social Marketing in Higher Education I think they bring up some valid arguments, but I simply don’t see our industry taking it to this level, at least no time soon.  At this point I feel like I understand Social Media enough to say that it’s not for everyone and in the foreseeable future it’s still going to be a great room for growth, but not mainstream.  Now the one thing Higher Education DOES have to be careful about is that if there is one audience that makes up the majority of people in social networks then it’s definitely high school and college students, our main market!  For this reason alone it’s going to be vital to monitor your online identity at the very least.  Also the sooner you can at least get familiar with these networks the better.

Now to the links!

• Will All Content Move To The Cloud? - The takeaway: “At the end of the day, what do users really want?” Yarmis asked. “Ultimately, what we want is services that give us the capability of having data independent of the devices we’re carrying.”
• Email Open Rate Metrics - Why Falling? Why Unreliable? - First, there are some trends about email as a medium that work to lower open rates in general. Second, changes in technology are making it more and more difficult to get reliable open rate data.
• A social network for freshmen at UIS - Jeremy Wilburn shares his success with creating a incoming first year student network on ning. This is a must read.
• Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered - In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
• Google Says, Long URLs May Hurt You - And here we have some actual proof that long URLs hurt your SERPs.
• 10 SEO Rules for Designers - Some solid and simple rules that everyone who works with websites should follow. I love the added rule zero, do not cheat!
• MySpace versus Facebook: Analysis of both traffic and ad revenue, using Google Trends - A very good look comparison between Facebook and MySpace. This one is a definite must read.  Now that we have heard that Facebook is beating MySpace worldwide and Google Trends Comes To Web Sites: Trends For Web Sites this article combines the two for a practical examination.

And finally here’s your funny video of the week!  How appropriate as it’s the summer of super heroes with Iron Man and Hulk already released and Hancock, Hellboy, and Batman still to come… but how could we skip a Superman sighting!?