Is there anything that hasn’t gone social? I spent four days in the Willamette Valley of Oregon visiting some wineries and checking in to all of them on FourSquare...because that’s what you do when you’re a geek.
What I wasn’t expecting was for the wineries to have specials on FourSquare. 10% of a purchase at one and at another they donated $1 to a reading program for every FourSquare check in.
Another winery I checked into started following me on FourSquare, found me on Twitter and then tweeted
@jutecht Thanks for checking in with 4sq— Winter’s Hill Vyd (@WintersHill) July 17, 2012
Churches have Facebook pages
My hot dog guy that I go to before every Mariners game asked me to friend him on Facebook.
The more I look around and see everything going social the more I am trying to figure out if there is any industry left that hasn’t gone social?
Oh….right….education.
Why? Why would a place that is all about community and relationships (words found in almost every mission statement) fight the very idea of creating them, fostering them and using them?
Why are so many schools scared to go social?
How many schools out there have verified their school on FourSquare and started using it with students?
How many schools out there have a Facebook page and actually use it to foster the relationships connected to it?
Twitter?
Google Plus?
Pinerest?
What-ever-the-next-one-will-be-called?
We are quickly getting to a point where if you are not going to connect with people via social networks then you are not getting out information in a very efficient way.
Education needs to stop fighting the social connection revolution and start to find ways to use it to connect their community both within the school and with the larger community.
