There has been a lot of recent announcements and buzz lately about Data Portability with Facebook, MySpace, and Google all introducing competing API’s in the last two weeks. ReadWriteWeb has an excellent article about this, Play the News: Data Portability Future.

We also welcomed a new blog into BlogHighEd and if you don’t follow the aggregate I wanted to share GlobalHigherEd with my readers. Kris and Susan, welcome to the aggregate! From GlobalHigherEd’s about page:

The GlobalHigherEd blog is designed to highlight and then archive information about new developments (e.g., a new policy or development project), resources (e.g., reports, websites), analytical networks, and so on, so as to better track what is happening with respect to the construction of new globalized knowledge/spaces.

So if you haven’t taken a look I highly recommend heading over to GlobalHigherEd and subscribing to their feed!

And now to the TGIF Lucky 7:

• Are Spammers Moving to Social Networks? – Spammers are finding virgin territory in emerging messaging tools, including SMS and social networks. Ferris Research projects that Americans will receive 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages in 2008, double the number sent in 2006.
• Demographics now available in YouTube Insight – Google has announced that YouTube’s analytics are adding a new layer of meaning for video owners: demographic information.
• The 25 Most Popular Pages on Facebook – Six months ago, Facebook launched Pages as a way for “businesses, brands, and celebrities to represent themselves on Facebook.” Now that Pages have been out for six months, we thought we’d see who’s got the most fans on Facebook.
• The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances – It’s great to keep in touch with your friends and colleagues, but does the price have to be spam, zombie bites, and friend invitations from people you’ve never heard of?
• Hitwise: Google Again Hits New High; Microsoft & Yahoo Again New Lows – Hitwise released the latest statistics for search engine share in the United States for April 2008.
• comScore: Yahoo! Buzz Overtakes Digg in April – Yahoo has more unique visits in April than Digg, wow. A new giant has emerged in the Social Bookmarking universe.
• Email Design Gallery – Need some Email Design ideas? The Campaign Monitor email design gallery highlights the amazing email designs being sent by our talented customers each and every day.

Related posts:

1. Links of the Week March 14th, 2008
2. Links of the Week July 3rd, 2008
3. Links of the Week June 13th, 2008

Blog High Ed is a network of nineteen higher education blogs.  These blogs are pulled from webmasters, marketers, counselors, and consultants and this blog aggregate was created to pull the best blogs that Higher Education has to offer. 

.eduGuru was lucky enough to make the final cut!  I thought it might be interesting to ask the creators a few questions to find out a little more about them and their reasons for creating the site.  Here are the findings.  

1.  Do you have a little background information that you care to share?

Matt: I have been a web designer now close to 12 years and in Higher Ed for 8.  Being 27 it has been a good chunk of my life.  I grew up in Iowa and was very active in sports and always had a computer around. Here is more my professional bio.

Brad:  I started with web design at 13, when I bought HTML 4.0 for Dummies.  I ‘ve been working in Higher Ed for 4 years now, starting in  marketing as a student assistant for 2 years of my undergrad and then moving into a professional position after graduation.   I grew up in Illinois.  You can learn more about me at my personal site. 

2.  Why have you created this resource and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

Matt: It is actually something I have wanted to do for 2 years now. I just hadn’t found the right person to do it with me. I met Brad and we just decided to go for it. I think our goal is to create a great resource for Higher Ed people. Another function is to create a community where people are more active, post on other peoples sites and raise everyone’s level of knowledge. Who knows where it will go in the future I would kind of look at these as our found principles or mission.

Brad: When we started talking it was obvious that Matt was also passionate about Higher Ed, and I knew we could get it done.  We kept talking about it and realized there would be no perfect time to start on it, so we devoted ourselves to the project for a solid month, collaborating over lunches and many late nights. I’ve always been big on creating community, dating back to my R.A. days in the dorm, and just love to have others to bounce ideas off of and learn from.   We certainly want to add value to the higher ed blogosphere and be able to highlight the great work our peers are doing.

3. What is it that you like most about working in Web Development on Higher Education?

Matt: I love social media and as I tell people when I speak on the topic our audience is the most active demographic with social media. It’s like it’s meant to be LOL!

Brad: I am more on the marketing/social media side than web development, and I absolutely love the ever-changing nature of my job.  Being only 24, I am still young enough to have a good grasp of the target audience, but still old enough to talk about “before YouTube and Facebook.”

4. How would a Higher Education blog go about getting added, what is the selection process?

Well, it is pretty simple. Just go to the apply page.

What we are looking for is the cream of the crop; people that are motivated. We’re looking for people who have a passion for blogging on Higher Ed, spend time checking out other blogs, reading news stories, and responding to comments. We are not seeking to be an exclusive club that only lets the ‘cool kids’ in. However, we are looking to get people who have insightful blogs and will be around for the long haul. We don’t want a blog that hasn’t had a post in 2 years, or hasn’t been around for long. Most blogs don’t last past the first 4-6 months, so we would like to see a consistent feed of quality posts from our members.  As far as selection, we will gauge the blog and what type of readership it has, and how the author is adding value to the Higher Ed community.  We haven’t quite made decisions about how often/many blogs we will add, but we certainly don’t want to water down the community.

Personally I want to say thank you guys!  This is a wonderful creation and you should be very proud!  This is a wonderful resource and a fits a nice niche of organizing the growing Higher Education online community.

Related posts:

1. Links of the Week: 5 Higher Ed Web Blogs You Probably Haven’t Heard of Worth Reading
2. Introducing New Guru’s @jesskry & @mikepetroff!
3. Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing