Ever since Facebook launched, schools and social media have enjoyed a strong connection. One of the first Web 2.0 site to really take off in Korea before Cyworld hit it big was a site called I Love School, which connected users looking for old school buddies.

Alumni have been a great source for fundraising for universities and it seems only natural that universities should do a better job of connecting with alumni and connection alumni to each other, increasing the value of the school and of the alumni body.

Mashable.com recently had an article 10 Ways Universities Are Engaging Alumni Using Social Media which outlines how universities can do a better job of connecting with its alumni. The list is not just for universities – these are good pointers for any organizating wanting to increase value and influence through members who are have passed through its organization.

Here is Mashable’s list of how universities are interfacing with alumni online:

• Helping alumni find jobs
• Collaboration and connecting with students
• Fundraising: From e-mails to tweets
• Training alumni to use social media
• Meeting alumni where they’re at
• Providing tools to spread information
• Alumni-generated content
• Promoting alumni networks
• Mobile reunions
• Connecting the dots: Google maps

I think openness is key here. Clay Shirky in his recent book, Here Comes Everybody show how the Catholic church in the face of its highly publicized priests’ child abuse scandals tried to impose limit the conversation the lay were having with each other. This may have been possible before the internet, but the effort in which you can disseminate information and organize groups is so low that it is simply impossible to contain conversation.

Like the church, universities have also classically enjoyed being the authority on knowledge and discourse, and being so, it would want to impose antiquated forms of limitation on what is talk within and about the institution. If you don’t embrace conversation and openness, members will find other ways of connecting with each other and you lose the opportunity to create value and take advantage of the group interaction.

Obama on his ground-breaking election bid website MyBO did exactly that, when the site did not shut down or delete the members’ open and vocal opposition to his stand on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

This is the way things are now. Organizations and institutions which do not embrace this new climate will be talked about, not talked with.

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