Correction appended
If you're sick of hearing toupee-donning, pudge-packing sports announcers boast of their latest tweet, or if you're ashamed to admit that both Grammy Gladys and your cousin's guinea pig have unusually scandalous Facebook albums, then you're well justified (and we should be friends).
However, as online social networks now encompass everyone from your hairdresser to corporate bigwigs, such sites have become mainstream in public relations efforts, used by fashion firms in New York City and even by Dartmouth's undergraduate admissions office.
Prospies and post-grads and ... tweets? Oh my!
According to Assistant Director of Admissions Ariel Xue '08, the admissions office has strongly embraced such online networking. Late this summer, the office launched its "Discover Dartmouth" Facebook group to attract and inform prospective students.
Inspired by the Facebook group "I'm interested in Tufts University," Discover Dartmouth is "run completely by students, but aided and advised by the admissions office," Xue said.
Since its launch, Discover Dartmouth has grown to nearly 400 members. Staffed by a diverse group of current students, known as the Web Guides, the site has become a significant part of admissions office's communications and recruitment, according to Xue.
"It's not something that we're spending money on, which is really one of the best parts about it," she said.
But do prospies really want to meet their guides and friend them, too? According to Xue, they do.
"Students are using Facebook more than ever to find out about schools on a more personal level, and they don't necessarily want to hear from an admissions officer," Xue said.
Several prospective Dartmouth students who have used the Discover Dartmouth group said that they found it helpful.
Yifeng Zhao, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, plans to apply early decision to Dartmouth, and posted a question on the group's wall last weekend.
"I'd say the response was pretty prompt," Zhao said. "I got a response from Michael Brown, an assistant director of admissions, on Monday night. He answered my question very directly."
Zhao said that the group made the admissions process "a little more accessible."
"It's definitely a great resource," he said. "Because, although most of the information is scattered around the admissions web site or on the blog pages of the various admissions directors, [now] you can get the answer to any question in a single place."
Zhao mentioned an additional benefit, explaining, "If you join the group then you can see what other prospective applicants are asking, what they're thinking."
Andy Samuels, a senior at Cherry Creek High School outside Denver, Colo., said the site was "the final straw" in his decision to apply early decision to Dartmouth.
"I was very interested in Dartmouth, but had a couple of reservations about the relative [geographic] isolation and ... the frat system," Samuels said. "I got two or three really good responses. Really helpful, very personal, directly from the students' mouths. I don't think that admissions filtered those at all. I got the impression that they were very honest accounts."
Xue said that the personal nature of Facebook had been a boon for the admissions office.
"The nature of social media is really so different than all of the other methods we have been using even so different from e-mail. You open [an e-mail] and see a message from a dean or the assistant director of admissions, but when I respond to messages on Facebook, it just says, Ariel' ... which you wouldn't expect from an admissions officer," Xue said.
The informality that comes with using sites like Facebook is beneficial for both the prospective students and college admissions offices as it has the tendency to humanize admissions process, Xue added.
The cyber setting does, however, pose potential problems.
"At first, we were scared that we would get questions that were really controversial, because I think people are generally more willing to categorize Dartmouth into a box with the drinking culture, stereotypes about the Greek system, all of that," Xue said. "We thought that it was really important while we were training our volunteers to make them aware that every question has multiple answers."
"Online, there's that potential to just have one answer and take away that answer without context," Xue added.
Facebook helps the admissions office tackle geographic and socioeconomic distances to reach a broader demographic of prospective students, Xue said.
"For students that can come to Dartmouth and visit, the majority can afford to attend with the help of their parents," she said. "The Web opens a kind of endless possibility in terms of reaching out to different communities."
According to Xue, international students are some of Discover Dartmouth's frequent visitors, noting that the web page is receiving posts from Africa, India, Australia, Canada and China.
Such international popularity not only adds to the College's diversity, but to its prestige as well, Xue said.
"The more people know about Dartmouth, the more Dartmouth's reputation grows as well, especially with [College President Jim Yong] Kim and his inauguration. Our global presence is increasing, so [our initiative] really helps keep that momentum going," Xue said.
Most importantly, such global importance does wonders for the Web Guides' Facebook friend counts: OMG!
And, even as their Blitz withdrawals wane, Dartmouth graduates are finding themselves chained to their office computers and surfing the pages of no, not the BBC Twitter.
As a marketing manager at Shefinds.com, Rebekah Rombom '08 uses Twitter extensively at work. Balancing marketing and public relations aspects of the review-based shopping web site, Rombom explains that she uses Twitter to "communicate with other people in the industry."
Rombom is a former executive editor of The Dartmouth.
To Rombom, Twitter is "an all-day cocktail party, but for work. You can pop in and pop out you can pay attention to the conversations surrounding you, and you can come out with some very valuable contacts. We've sold ads through it, and we've met readers."
"Twitter is everything you would go to a networking event for," she said. "We have a job opening right now, and we Tweeted about it."
For those of us who still don't quite get Twitter, Rombom can empathize.
"I didn't know about Twitter until I was at work," she said. "I think everyone is still figuring out Twitter, and everyone has to use it in their own special way. We have a bunch of Twitter handles at the company: five. And we have amassed about a total of about 15,000 followers."
Taylor Howard '08, a fashion assistant at Tractenberg & Co., has created Facebook fan pages and updated Twitter accounts for the beauty and fashion brands that her public relations firm represents.
"Twitter is a little bit more interactive [than Facebook], and we get diehard fans asking questions or wanting photos of the brand or events," she said. "I'm always constantly updating the fans and keeping them in the loop."
But why Twitter?
"We want consumers to be an interactive part of all of our brands, to make it more of a lifestyle brand rather than something you'd just pick up at the mall," Howard said. "It's something constantly on your mind, something you're always thinking about."
However, problems still arise with both the use and abuse of such networks. Although Rombom uses Twitter to attract readers for Shefinds.com, she admits that a potential consumer must search for the Twitter page, "rather than just stumble upon it."
Additionally, the separation of personal, online contacts from work obligations presents potential issues.
"Working in an Internet job and having been a writer before, there's a lot of information with my name out there," Rombom said. "I use my Twitter handle exclusively for work, I didn't have one before I started working, so that's not a problem. You really just have to limit your Facebook profile to only your friends."
Howard said she recognized the same challenge delineating.
"I can't make Facebook events from the brand fan page, so I have to do it from my personal page, and I have to invite all of my personal friends. I think that's something that Facebook definitely needs to change, so that I don't have to be a part of my brand," she said.
Although Howard is also a member of the business-oriented social network LinkedIn, she said she approaches that tool differently than she does her personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.
"For the most part, I'm more friends with people in my workplace [on LinkedIn] those who I work with on a daily basis whereas, not so much with Facebook or Twitter," Howard said. "I'm not going to put pictures up of my friends and me hanging out on a Friday night on LinkedIn, and I'm not going to talk about what I had for dinner, like I do on Twitter."
Unfortunately, dear old Dartmouth did not provide Rombom or Howard with much Twitter experience during their undergraduate years.
"We didn't have Twitter at Dartmouth when I was there," Rombom said.
Apparently the page-surfing, picture-stealing, and pseudo-stalking nature of such online social networks is intellectually valuable long after one makes peace with a Blitz-free existence.
