Analytics Overload

"We are hoping this thing goes viral!"

Is that the Harvard campus I see?

So said a colleague about a video that, to be honest, looked like a homage to the classic horror show Dark Shadows.

The bucolic leafy campus was rendered in over-saturated grayscale and a tinny voice (likely from a few centuries ago) was mumbling on about being in Cambridge.

I was worried that the clip could actually cause a virus. (Judge for yourself---and by doing so, you could help that video go viral.)

Thanks to analytical tools like Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Social Flow or simply eyeballing how many likes or followers you have, success or failure is merely a click away. Such instant evaluation is a mixed blessing to those in communications---and to deans and other administrators.

Sure, we send out a snapshot of our +s and -s each month (even though, in the words of another colleague, "who knows if anyone actually looks at these stats.") Getting a major boost in web traffic or having a press release spread like a wildfire is gratifying. (As I write this, a story about a slippery surface inspired by the pitcher plant is snaking its way through cyberspace. Cool!)

You like us! You really like us!

By any measure, Harvard is hard to miss online. The big H has over 700,000 friends on Facebook, the equivalent to the entire population of greater Boston. Wow!

Moreover, Harvard was ranked #2 in a list of social media colleges.

I honestly couldn't tell you what that means---other than, thanks to being so decentralized, just about every school, center, institute, and person with an idea, likely has their own social media empire, thereby magnifying our digital footprint ad infinitum.

That said, I think it it fantastic that videos from courses like Justice or CS 50 have become "hits"---and that people really use them to, well, learn. The same goes for TED talks or our Science & Cooking public lectures (some reaching 100,000+ views).

Universities have a fantastic opportunity to use social media to share knowledge and ideas, especially with the distribution costs being relatively low.

Thinking of social media as a way to push content out, rather than to build a brand or increase yield, seems a smarter way to go. If better branding or higher donations is an after effect, then well, that's great. I do not think, however, it should ever be the aim.

John Rosenberg, the brilliant editor of Harvard Magazine said it best. "Just create really interesting content" and the rest will take care of itself. The old rules of journalism have not left us, even with all those Kindles and iPads. Story still matters.

Moreover, when you are not selling a product or beholden to shareholders and you simply cannot admit all of the qualified students who apply, how do you position gobs of data to the higher ups?

A good case study is the famed Glee-inspired Yale Admissions video, "That's Why I Chose Yale." Receiving over one million views on YouTube might suggest a fantastic success.



Notice that the comments are turned off. That was deliberate, as the frenzy that erupted after this toe-tapping treatment of one of the country's most prestigious universities was not always pretty. Will this video really help a prospective student to "choose Yale"? Well, maybe, as applications were way up. Alas, the yield was down. Maybe it was the video? Maybe not.

I do not think the lesson is not to make admissions videos. They can be helpful. The lesson could be to be as honest as possible about what an institution is really like. Again, let the stories tell themselves. (Having made a few non-recruitment recruitment videos, that's not always easy. We learned that going after what's cool, fun, and interesting was far more important than trying to convey a particular message or theme. The messages emerge on their own.)

As for success ... One viewing could make a difference to a donor or a student---and well, the rest could be history. For a small college, a few hundred targeted views could be fantastic and for a large well-known university millions of views could be meaningless.

Sure, keep tabs on all of those analytics --- to improve the user experience, to see what's hot and what's not, but be really careful about divining anything from the data.

As mentioned, I see social networking as an avenue for learning (which Apple, by the way, is really pushing as a theme with the iPad --- it's all about learning!)



Or, consider what Google's Al Spector '76 had to say in an interview I conducted with him about a year ago.

By putting out course materials and other assets, could Harvard easily be co-opted or virtualized elsewhere? Or could some of its essence be lost?

In my view, Harvard, by having its materials widely available, only increases its value to society. By so doing, it also increases its brand value. The more people who use Harvard materials, the more who will realize it is a marker for top scholarship.

Could you duplicate Harvard in a purely virtual or online world? My answer is ‘no’ because Harvard is most significantly the interactions of people, in a variety of settings, where co-location is quite important. I think of my undergraduate experience, for example, in North [now Pforzheimer] House. My interactions with my roommates Geoff Clemm [formerly of Sun and now at IBM] and Trip Hawkins [founder of Electronic Arts] as well as people in other disciplines, like Yo-Yo Ma, vastly enriched my education.

The open courseware initiatives, like the one at MIT, are a valuable approach, I think, to getting more material to a wider audience. There is a lot of change happening in education, but I see every reason to believe that the online technologies should significantly enhance Harvard in the broadest sense.

Given that Google is the king of analytics, I think he has the right take on how higher education can use social networking to further its mission. After all, if places like Harvard and MIT don't do so, someone else will.