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| BATON ROUGE – In recent years, social networking Web sites have become more and more popular, and one of the leading sites in this field is Facebook. The Web site, which was started by college students and was initially only available for college students, has sparked a unique rivalry among some of its most popular university users, including LSU and Texas A&M. A study released July 9 by the higher education marketing group BlueFuego looked at 1,035 Facebook fan pages in higher education, and it was determined that LSU, whose page can be accessed at http://www.facebook.com/geauxlsu, had the largest Facebook fan base for a university. In recent weeks, Texas A&M made a charge to pass LSU and has since taken the lead with the largest university fan base. BlueFuego has been monitoring the race among the top universities and has decided to up the ante in the competition with the “100,000 Fans, 100,000 Pennies” promotion. BlueFuego is planning to donate one penny for every fan to the school who reaches 100,000 fans first. The winning school will choose a scholarship or fund at the institution for the money to be donated toward. “The Race to 100K is a way to encourage universities to continue growing their presence on Facebook and build affinity with their community on the Web,” said Brad J. Ward, chief explosion officer for BlueFuego. “Our research ignited a rivalry between Texas A&M and LSU, so we saw this as a fun way to encourage the competition and also as a way for us to give back to the higher ed community through the 100,000 pennies donation to the school who reaches 100,000 fans first.” According to Joe Gaylor, chief combustion officer at BlueFuego, the LSU fan page stood out to them when they started tracking college/university Facebook fan pages to gather information for their own clients to use as benchmarks. “We noticed the incredible growth of the LSU fan page at the beginning of June when we pulled our June 1st data, noticing that the LSU page grew 57 percent from 5/1-6/1 to more than 25,000 fans,” Gaylor said. “At that time, we had LSU on our radar to see what would happen in the coming months in terms of fan growth. Then it was off to Omaha and the College World Series, where we saw the amazing passion and community at LSU, including Les Miles tweeting in the crowd.” Shortly after the College World Series, LSU became the first university with 50,000 fans. The rivalry with Texas A&M was started soon after with A&M announcing through a press release that they had set their sights on becoming the top university Facebook group. There were posts on each institution’s fan pages acknowledging the budding competition among the schools. The LSU Facebook site is run by the LSU Office of Communications & University Relations. The page provides an opportunity for Tigers and Tiger fans to find out what’s happening at LSU, to network with each other, to express their school spirit and to consider timely university issues. The page provides LSU highlights; links to selected LSU-related media coverage; an events list; discussion groups; LSU videos and photos; and links to fellow LSU Facebook pages, the LSU home page, the Forever LSU site, LSU Athletics’ site, the LSU Wire subscription page and LSU’s official Twitter feed. To become part of the race to 100,000 fans of LSU, visit the LSU Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/geauxlsu. Visiting LSU’s Facebook fan page does not require login, but establishing an account will enable you to become a fan of the LSU page to join discussions and make posts of your own. To follow the “100,000 Fans, 100,000 Pennies” competition, visit http://bluefuego.com/index.php/race-to-100k/. LSU is also involved in other forms of new media and social networking. To follow LSU on Twitter, visit http://twitter.com/lsunews. To follow LSU’s YouTube channel, visit http://www.youtube.com/lsu. To get weekly updates on LSU news and events via e-mail, subscribe to LSU Wire at http://appl003.lsu.edu/Ur/LSUWire.nsf/Subscribe?OpenForm. -30- |
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