• Social Networks, the Next Educational Tool? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education’s Source for News, Views and Jobs

  “An Arizona State survey was administered in September over the Web to all freshmen in the university’s campus residence halls; about 21 percent responded. Asked whether they use a social networking site, 93.2 percent said they do actively, 4 percent had in the past and 2.8 said never. For Facebook, the percentage of active users is 88.6, compared to 3.4 former users and 8.1 percent who said they have never used it.” Students also said they find Facebook more valuable for social than academic interactions, indicating that faculty could probably find more value in social networks.

  tags: social_networks, facebook, daily_reading

• SEO maven Russell Wright goes On the Record…Online with Eric Schwartzman

  Eric Schwartzman calls this “possibly the most compelling interview” he’s ever done, and that’s saying something for a veteran of 140 podcasts. Wright goes into the finer points of search engine optimization, and some of the things he says are truly surprising. For example, targeting a bigger universe of keywords can actually be more effective than specializing. Dominating geographic search is drop-dead simple at the moment. Why link-baiting on del.icio.us may be a bad idea. Why Google Connect will change everything. How using terms that aren’t on your keyword list can benefit keyword visibility. There’s more in this fascinating 53-minute program

  tags: daily_reading

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