Foursquare and geolocation services

Mary Tunney and Jenny Mackintosh of Public Relations introduced their plan to roll out Foursquare campus-wide in the next few weeks. In their own words:

Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users “check in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’ve been there with.

They have been working to compile a list of venues related to Boston University in preparation for Foursquare to launch a Boston University Foursquare page (similar to the Syracuse University Foursquare page, for example). Currently, BU has a profile page, which will be converted into the newer university landing page in the next week or so. Once BU “owns” those venues on Foursquare, we will be able to access analytics on who is visiting, as well as manage specials and discounts at particular locations around campus.

Leo Pare of Athletics asked about the accuracy of checking in to locations close to each other, for example, Nickerson Field and Agganis Arena. We clarified that Foursquare’s check-in system is not automatic; it can use geolocation services on your phone to suggest nearby locations, but ultimately, it is up to the user to check in. Susan Lebovits of Sustainability asked if Foursquare could be used to mark “green” landmarks around campus as part of a promotion, since the actual Sustainability office is not likely to be visited by the general population. We suggested that she send a list of venues she might be interested in promoting so that we can include them in a second round of requests. We also discussed SCVNGR as another tool that might allow her to create a challenge on her own.  Raul Fernandez of the Howard Thurman Center also underlined a few of the key differences between Foursquare and SCVNGR, describing SCVNGR as “more flexible and customizable” with the addition of challenges and “treks.”

BU Today’s new editor, John O’Rourke

John O’Rourke came by the Social Media Communicators meeting to introduce himself and to give some insights on what BU Today is looking to cover in the upcoming academic year. They are looking for feedback on the site — the good, the bad, and any suggestions on how to make BU Today a more effective news source for the campus community. They will put a stronger emphasis on student stories this year in the hopes of boosting student readership. They are also looking to expand beyond their core set of campus experts and to talk with a broader range of professors. Any information or suggestions can be directed either to today@bu.edu, or to John O’Rourke directly.

Kim Cornuelle, BU Today’s production manager, also went over some tips for coverage. The front page has three headlines and one feature per day during the regular academic year. If you have an event coming up, make sure to put it into the BU Calendar, as they populate their BU Today calendar (both on the site and in the daily e-mail) from those events. They also suggested keeping BU Today in the loop for social media-related cross-promotional opportunities — any official event hashtags on Twitter, links and other information can be included in the bottoms of stories to help promote use.

Upcoming Events

Sustainability, SPH, DAR, FitRec and CFA all had events to promote this month, which we will list in the “Communicators” section shortly. If you do not have access to this section, please send an e-mail to jemack@bu.edu to request.

Update 4:22 pm: The event listing is now live & available to the SMC group.

Video Content, Flip Cameras & Video Editing

Lauren Davalla and Kira Jastive of Public Relations presented a handful of videos, produced by the department using Flip video cameras and shared using BUniverse and the BU Now blog. Public Relations is now using Flip video to respond to breaking news and build a library of content around evergreen topics. One video interview with Cutler Cleveland on the oil spill was later repurposed in a BU Today story. Kira and Lauren emphasized one of the main benefits of creating your own video content: it can be repurposed across many social channels (blogs, Facebook, BUniverse, Twitter) and help to promote experts outside of the university.

Jean Connaughton (CFA) explained that she had been playing with an HD Flip video camera at the Tanglewood Institute, and said that Flip video is a good way to share an event without having to rely on an external crew — a new way to showcase events that would otherwise go uncovered. The group also discussed the quality and options available when comparing Flip-type quickcams to more expensive digital video cameras (optical versus digital zoom, software for editing, etc.)

Kim Cornuelle of BU Today offered her suggestions on video editing: the staff uses Final Cut or Avid for videos and iMovie for slideshows. They also use a conversion tool, MPEG Streamclip, to convert videos for iMovie. She offered that while videos edited using Windows Movie Maker and iMovie will not be as clean looking as Final Cut videos, they’re a fine (much more affordable) standby.

To conclude the discussion on video, Mary Tunney offered to look into scheduling a workshop with a freelance video editor to go over filming and editing techniques. She will have more details on this in the fall.

QR Codes

Susan Lebovits of Sustainability presented briefly on her investigation of QR Codes with an outside vendor. She explained them as a type of barcode that can be added to posters or other print media, and then scanned by smartphones to bring users to specific websites. They are looking to try the technology in the fall for Sustainability promotions. Specific websites/tools discussed included ScanLife and Stickybits.

WordPress Upgrades & Facebook Integration

Scott Dasse of New Media came by to answer questions related to WordPress. Many groups are migrating their websites over to WordPress in the near future. Scott explained that many “shiny” widgets (such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr stream tools) are not currently able to be added directly to sites because they require editing of the theme, while others can simply be embedded right into a WordPress “text” widget. He emphasized that many of these “shiny” tools will actually hold up load time of the page, which is why they have not yet allowed them. As a workaround, they could investigate building something custom in WordPress (as part of the theme) that would be allowed for general use.

CFA said they use social media (mainly Facebook) often to announce changes to events, which is easier to update than the website itself. SMG also asked about inclusion of the “Like” button, which Scott said made sense to include. He also mentioned that a gallery widget is in the works, and should be available soon. Corinne Steinbrenner pointed us to the Collegian current issue on the CGS website, and their use of AddThis on individual stories (example). The tool can be directly added to the story without the need for a widget request.

Upcoming Events

Mary opened up the floor for event announcements which might require some coordination from the Social Media Communicators. We’ve compiled the list, including applicable hashtags and web addresses, and placed them in the “Communicators” section of the blog (Kerberos login required). If you are a Social Media Communicator and are unable to access this section, please send a request to jemack@bu.edu.

(Image courtesy Damon Duncan on Flickr.)