Several colleagues sent me a link this past week to a new Twitter-related service called AlumTweet.
You give AlumTweet the name of your high school and your college, plus the year in which you graduated from each one. The service then generates a tweet (i.e., a message sent via Twitter) from you that says something like
Just added myself to http://alumtweet.com - Central High School '82 and State University '86
In your case, it would insert the name of the high school and the college you self-identify as your own. You can edit the message too. Next, you log in to Twitter from the AlumTweet site and the message goes out. Then you can view any other alumni (or current students) who have registered from your schools – or from other schools in your US state. If there are any. And you can click their profile and view their Twitter page.
AlumTweet is appealing, at first glance, to those of us trying to figure out how to use Twitter to connect alumni with one another. I have not pondered AlumTweet's model deeply, but it strikes me there are a few pros and several cons of the AlumTweet model.
On the plus side, you might find the last three people from high school who haven't become your "friend" on Facebook. And, in case it was of any interest to your Twitter followers, you could broadcast the name of your high school and college to them. And if you're a hard-working advancement pro trying to find "lost alumni" there's a small chance a missing one might turn up on Twitter. (Not sure what you would do then... would you follow them on Twitter, and if they follow you back, send them a Direct Message asking for their email address?)
Potential negatives:
- Anyone can select any school from the high school or college list. There's no verification or authentication of any kind.
- Unless you select a high school, the earliest college class year you can select is 1995.
- The system doesn't seem to "know" (or care) whether your purported college existed when you say you graduated. A quick test shows that one could, for example, claim to have graduated from Cal State Channel Islands in 1982 – twenty years before it opened.
- You can edit the message announcing that you're using AlumTweet, but even if you remove your school name and class year, they will be published for others to see on the AlumTweet site.
- You have to submit your Twitter username and password to AlumTweet. (Click image to open in new window:)
For me, the last point – third-party log in – is the deal-breaker. Not because AlumTweet won't guard your information. They might – I have no way of knowing. And that's the point.
Everyone should be careful when entering web service log in credentials on third-party sites. The same openness to third-party developers that makes Twitter easy and fun to use also makes it vulnerable to security bugs or misdeeds. Others (with way more technical know-how than me) have documented such flaws and weaknesses.
So until some of these authentication issues are worked out, I personally will steer clear of most such services. But for those of you who dive in and try the service, I'd be interested to know whether you find other alumni – and find the service worthwhile.
Thanks to everyone who sent me a note about AlumTweet.
Additional Links:
Interfolio's follow up to this posting
Brad Ward's blog posting about AlumTweet