I have a bold prediction about facebook (or “the facebook” for us old-timers). I am making this prediction based on keen observation, scientific analysis and guessing…..mostly guessing.

I have had a love-hate with facebook from the start, and from the start I mean 2004. Ever since they started with the vanity URLs I have become a bigger fan, and I do not see the facebook momentum in any area slowing down anytime soon with one exception.  My prediction is: within 5 years, college students will start to leave facebook, or at least it will not be their primary social hub.  I know you think I might be crazy, but hear me out.

Facebook is big. If there is a word that embodies a more descriptive meaning than big, then that is the word I need. Perhaps, huge, massive, or gargantuan is a more appropriate term to use when describing facebook.  Yet, according to a recent article on Mashable “…Facebook is valued higher than CBS, Discovery Communications, and Macy’s.” Facebook, which started as a tool for college students to connect, now has over 250 million make that 300 million users worldwide with over 150 million unique logins in everyday.  And I think they are just getting started.

The 2 reasons I am making this prediction:  1) Parents. 2) Corporations.

Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is no longer first-year college students, it is people ages 35 years and up. That means parents, uncles, aunts, or other authority figures that may (depending on your privacy settings) have access to view your activities or photos. You should ask your students the start of every year how many of them have parents on facebook to see if the number increases over the years.  My Aunt that joined facebook last week and she just turned 69.  I think it is cool so I can keep up with her, but her soon to be college grandkids may think differently.  And when my parents joined last week I did not know what to think.

Facebook has had a few major development changes that I think are interesting, but the one that affect this issue is the creation of fan pages. Pages we create for corporations and organizations easily have a presence and advertise on facebook. They were given the first opportunity to create vanity URLs such as facebook.com/vitaminwater before people had the opportunity to create their custom URL. In the current world of marketing, facebook is becoming an essential step in any marketing campaign that can quickly distribute information to a mass audience.

When facebook hit the college campus it was their thing. You had to have a “.edu” email address, while everyone else could go join MySpace or Friendster. College students embraced thefacebook.com and Mark Zuzkerberg, but now it is starting to become a place of commerce. It is like showing up to the mall, or any personal hangout spot, and your parents are hanging out there.  So I ask: when was the last time college students wanted to socially interact in a corporate location with their parents?

Several years ago I noticed if you wanted to run for student government, there was a new requirement – a Facebook group.  After discovering this, I wondered if the number of members who joined the group was an indicator and predictor of success; and to my surprise, I found the results to be only a few percentage points off.

Recently, I saw a new Facebook group at my Alma Mater, Howard Payne University (HPU), rallying support for my former literature professor as the next university president. This is the first time I have ever seen a Facebook group used to rally support for a potential university president. (There are a lot of groups about university presidents, but not for positive reasons).  And as a person with ties to HPU, higher education, and social media, I am intrigued by this use of Facebook.

As I begin writing this post, I am a little nervous, especially since this is about someone who once graded my writing.  (I hope she doesn’t send me corrections or grade this!)  Dr. Romig is a great professor; she challenges and expects the most out of her students.  After finishing her PHD at Rice University in 1978, she started teaching at HPU and has been there ever since.  Audree Johnson, an HPU alumni, described Dr. Romig’s classes as “life changing.”  As Audree talked about her experience at HPU and Dr. Romig’s class, I thought she purposely giving me cliché answers, but the more she spoke, I realized that she genuinely enjoyed and had an amazing learning experience in Dr. Romig’s classes that really changed her life.  (Did I mention that Audree, or Ms. Johnson is a high school English teacher?) Dr. Romig literally changed Audree’s life, which is why when Audree heard her former professor was interested in applying for the vacant president position, Audree created a Facebook group to rally her support. Dr. Romig thought only a few people would join but it quickly grew to 447 members! Not bad for a school with a population of 1200 students!

You have an online space even if you do not claim it. A student of the McCombs School of Business (probably an alumni now) created a Facebook account for Red McCombs the namesake of the school 4 years ago. Red McCombs is a brand, he did not claim his space, so someone else did.

Recently there was an article in the Chronicle about fake twittering presidents from The University of Texas and Georgetown University which leads me to think who is monitoring your universities brand? Have you claimed your space? Are people not only talking about you, but talking for you?

William Powers Fake Twitter Page.

“Blanket Email Syndrome” : The numb communicational state that students develop after receiving a series of mass emails, in which, the majority of the content is irrelevant.

In our travels to colleges and universities across the country, we have met numerous administrators who are frustrated with their ability to open lines of communication with students. Many have gone to the great lengths of directly text messaging students themselves. Others will turn their heads away from their computer screen to avoid seeing photos on Facebook. Campus life administrators have found themselves in the difficult situation of trying to disseminate large amounts of vital information without “crying wolf”; possibly turning off the student body to their list-serve (or blanket) emails. The causes of blanket email syndrome are not rooted in student apathy, but in the average students’ sense of urgency and the relevance of given information.

It is safe to say that technology has sped up the campus world, and in the daily touch-and-go lifestyle most students adhere to, students have found faster methods of communication. Mobile technology and the internet provide an increasing number of ways to communicate, and there is no question as to whom the primary adopters of these new technologies has been. One administrator recently reported, “My student body president told me yesterday that she only uses email to talk to old people!”

Despite the wonderful sense of humor this administrator had to a comment most would wince at, the message was pretty clear. The average student has already settled on their preferred methods of communication by the time they reach college, and some may even call it an early establishment of a digital identity. However, to reach a particular student, one must now either know the student-preferred channels of communication, or in the case of email, that student must know you.

We can spend as much time as we like trying to decipher new web platforms like Facebook, MySpace, or even Twitter (for the super-savvy). However, these are only changes in the chosen channels of communication. To get to the root of the cause of “blanket email syndrome” ask yourself, how often do you read the entire newspaper? Most people don’t do that these days. There isn’t enough time in the day, and most of us would rather get a summary of topics we care about from CNN.com or another news service.

Super-involved students we meet (the extremely diligent) report that they know their inbox and particularly which emails are the mass emails. They will usually skim or delete the mass emails. They too, would much rather get straight to the pertinent information, or get a CNN.com update of their world. They aren’t complacent because they don’t care, they just require relevant communication. The biggest social network of students in the United States today is Facebook, with 65% of their users logging in every day. When a student logs in to Facebook, only the relevant information – information that pertains to the user alone – is instantly seen, and that’s interesting.

It is easy to get a student to read your first and second emails, but if they aren’t engaged by the content, then the tendency is to judge future incoming emails as superfluous, boring, or even a waste of time. The name of the game is “relevance” and the more you are able to get relevant content to the right people, the more responsive and engaged the students will be.