So, this time I created two presentations to illustrate what my students & alums shared today in response to a request on Facebook & on Twitter. What are they doing in their jobs & internships with regard to social media?

Almost 30 have replied so far. I imagine I’ll get more before schools starts in two weeks. Check ‘em out on Storify & Prezi. Many thanks for the help!

Storify collection and Prezi collection … or, see them embedded below.

If anyone else wants to critique this … or share their experiences, I’ll appreciate the input.

Here is an example of what people were saying about Auburn’s Spring Graduation 2011. The video at the bottom is an excellent example of stakeholder generated content.  (Photo & video via Melanie Foster)

http://storify.com/rdfrench/auburn-university

Both rely heavily on absolute / universal statements.

Twitter is NOT a Social Network, Says Twitter Exec

Social “Me”dia and the Evolving Twitter Egosystem

Twitter may try to define their product/service all they wish. The reality remains that the site’s users and visitors will define the brand.

A social network is defined by “patterns of ties” or relationships wherein people share common experiences and/or beliefs – among other things. See http://bit.ly/socialnetwork-defined for just a wee bit of history.

Me thinks Kevin Thau was doing some PR work on stage. He wishes to brand Twitter as something he can sell. This “Twitter is news” etc. meme serves his interests well.

It still doesn’t make his absolute statement – Twitter is not a social network – true.

Hate to break it to you, but Twitter is a social network for many people; ergo, Twitter is a social network – for some, if not many.

Here’s a thought.  Read a book.  Not your own.

While we’re  at  it,  AdAge does it again. Meet Simon Dumenco. Simon knows absolutely nothing about PR. Want proof? Read RIP, the Press Release (1906-2010) — and Long Live the Tweet. Sigh. Another clueless wonder with a column in AdAge.

Taylor Swift Challenges Two Auburn Students
Taylor Swift Tells Auburn Students :: Good Deeds Are Rewarded with Hugs

In a continuing story, Taylor Swift finds the site AHugfromTaylorSwift.com launched by two Auburn students. She challenges the students for a chance at that hug they so deeply desire. Click image for video.

This is turning into a pretty funny story. Nicole LaMontagne first wrote about it in A Hug from Taylor Swift. “Two 22-year-old college students, Michael Wekall and Ryan Leander, are campaigning on Auburn’s campus and making a documentary in hopes to receive a hug from country pop star idol Taylor Swift.”

Help an Auburn Student Win $50K
Student Entrepreneurs Get Paid for Their Passions
IAFE Video Competition

Help an Auburn student win $50,000. Most views wins. Carrie Williams’ “story has been selected to move forward in the final round to win $50,000, however, in order to win” Carrie needs you to click this link and watch her video. Read more…

“Carrie Williams reports on Auburn’s future up-and-coming entrepreneurs. With unemployment rates at 10.2 percent, these student business owners have ditched the suit and tie, nine-to-five, everyday corporate life-style and are creating their own employment euphoria. From owning a skate and surf company to creating unique jewelry pieces, all it takes is a little bit of determination and passion to prosper.” Visit the Free Enterprise YouTube Channel.

Over at PROpenMic we’ve been continuing our growth. I like the way we’ve been reaching more and more students from around the world. Today, PROpenMic has students from about 70 countries and over 400 colleges and universities.

Auburn Family is another project. It recently brought the students a silver medal from SIAA. Auburn University also rewarded the students with a front page (top right hand corner) link to their project. That’s pretty cool recognition of a project well done. I’m proud of the students.

We still post at The Loveliest Village and our joint project with The Corner News has seen about 300 features and videos posted on those sites.

Last summer, I helped Auburn Works (ATAC), the Auburn Technical Assistance Center, launch their own social network. Building the Auburn Works Network is proving to help them better present just what it is that ATAC does. They teach Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma and other other management programs.

I haven’t done a complete tally of The Corner News posts & videos, but here is the total from Auburn Family, ATAC and The Loveliest Village: 1,847 Videos & 1,592 features in only 3 years! With the number from The Corner News, I believe we’re actually up to over 2,000 videos and about 1,900 feature stories. I’d call that experiential education … wouldn’t you?  Students post 10 stories and videos a semester, at minimum.

I have other news I’ll be sharing in the days to come. Among that news, you’ll see how we discovered the reach our my students and their social network connections.

But now, on to the video … with a reminder to check out PROpenMic. From the front page of PROpenMic, here’s the video and more.

I like this video.  It’s from the “Indiana University Master’s in Public Relations (program) in Indianapolis.  Professors Bob Dittmer and Julie Vincent, both APRs, address the definition of PR, the types of jobs PR professionals can do, stereotypes of PR, and other PR-related subjects.”

If You’re Spinning, You’re Lying
Bob Dittmer and Julie Vincent, Indiana University’s Master’s in PR Program

Latest News

NEW! Read PR Faculty Magazine. It is a mashup from the RSS feeds of 20+ PR educators around the world. If you have a suggested blog you’d like to see added, please write to me at PROpenMic. Happy to add new blogs.

Ben Parr at Mashable has, it seems, been sipping the Koolaid.

Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How

Parr writes, “The Social Analyst … a weekly column … where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.”

Mashable has become a sort of cause celebre of the new social media/network journalism. This stems from CNN’s adoption of Pete Cashmore as a columnist. “Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.” (Source)

I often wonder whether the sometimes cheerleader-esque nature of many Mashable (and TechCrunch, for example) posts really equal the journalistic integrity we expect from more established journalism sites. Could it be that they, unlike say … the New York Times or even Wired, for crying out loud … seek to write those screamin’ headlines that draw in readers (sans rational consideration of all sides of an issue).

The post from Ben Parr makes me question that ability to avoid the koolaid and put down the pom-pons.

Here’s my reaction to Ben Parr’s post … read it first, of course, then my critique.

Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How

Parr writes, “over 160,000 Google Buzz posts and comments per hour” are flowing through the new Google Buzz (in GMail). My question? How many of those are feeds from other sites that people are already using with dedication & devotion? We don’t know, but one guesses what you’re counting is actually RSS fed activity from other tools.

Is Google really going to get them to dig up roots and move to GMail? Seriously. Will everyone move from Twitter and Facebook into Google Buzz? I kinda doubt it (at least not without many more adaptations to the Buzz).

With regard to security / privacy issues, Parr writes, “Google is responding with lightning speed.” Um, no.

They are reacting with Facebook-like speed. Further, why would they make the tool opt-out by default. They certainly have watched all that has happened with Facebook. This was a foolish bad practice that they could have avoided altogether. Put down the Koolaid.

Yes, I and many others, have been able to fold all our email accounts into one GMail account. But, what are the numbers on that? I don’t know. Do you? Is the US adoption greater than the rest of the world per capita? I’m betting the answer is yes.

Yes, Google has an enormous user base that, if they can produce the right tool(s), Google can use to usurp and replace other sites/networks … or at least equal. However, Google Buzz seems to be more of a new version of an aggregator (much like Google Reader) than a replacement for Twitter and/or Facebook.

There is much, much work to do on interface, add-ons, and so many other areas … it is too soon to proclaim it as a world changer. Could it be? Sure (with work). Twitter took years to catch on. Google has an advantage in user base, but can they convert? Many of their labs projects seem to fizzle after only months.

I’m not a big fan of Google Buzz right now. I’m also not ready to pan it completely. I was also not a fan of Twitter at its inception. Now, I use Twitter probably more than any other site (except niche Ning communities). Let’s see what happens with new apps for Buzz. That is, in large part, what boosts the appeal and use of most (if not all) social network sites.

Sometimes, I’m not kidding, these sites (Mashable/TechCrunch, et.al.) are doing what they decry and hammer PR people for doing. You know, their skewed perception that all we do is promote … sans fair presentation of facts? Oh, they won’t like that characterization … will they?

How about all things in moderation, Mr. Parr and Mashable. Step away from the lil’ koolaid pitcher.

The site, hosted on the Ning platform, has been up for three weeks. You’ll note that the site is residing on the university’s domain. We have only found a few other college/university social networks. Auburn’s is the only one we can find that is totally open to the public.

Coverage has been pretty good. The Associated Press and several state newspapers and TV stations have covered the site’s launch.

Students in PRCM 4020, PR Messages in Style & Design, are managing the site. Each student has complete administrator status. Every week, one group of students write features and create videos for the site.

As of this writing, Auburn Family has 1,324 members. Here’s a breakdown so far: 680 students (Auburn & high school), 78 parents, 453 alumni, 20 faculty, 58 staff, and 110 Friends of Auburn. Please note: the numbers overlap because now you may pick more than one designation. Also, answering this question was not required for half of the signups. So, we know – for example – that we have more than 78 parents. Many of the alumni, for instance, are also parents of students.

Here are three of the stories in state newspapers so far:

Opelika-Auburn News, Huntsville Times and the Columbus (GA) Ledger Enquirer.

Why did I want to do this? It is the ultimate experiential learning experience. Well, one of them, at least. Considering that the university bought into all of our work over the past several years, I feel it serves to give a bit of validity to our classroom activities. The students are now getting to run a site for the university.

It isn’t hard to get the students excited about the exercise. They love their school and want to put their own best foot forward. It is content ripe for a student’s digital portfolio. Showing future employers that they have experience running a social network for such a large institution has its benefits, too.

I’m happy with the site’s progress. Looking forward to how it advances in the weeks to come.

Here’s an update on PROpenMic‘s traffic over the first year. Only April ’08 through February ’09 (11 months) are available.

I’ve used publicly available information from Compete.com and Alexa.com.  They are services used by media buyers to determine rates for ad buys, for instance.

I’ve chosen a selection of sites for comparison that are considered by many to be staples (of sorts) in the online communication, marketing and public relations professions.  All are niche.  All, but PROpenMic, are actually organizations or businesses with budgets.  We don’t have one of those ‘budget’ things at PROpenMic.  ;o)  More on that, later.

The reality is that we are the only social network site soley focused on bringing together students, faculty and professionals.  So, it is kind of hard to make strong comparisons.

We do (IMO) seem to be performing pretty well when stacked up against these larger organizations.  Does this mean that for social networks, it is what the members make of it?

Read my thoughts, or go straight to the stats.

For example, you’ll see that if PROpenMic accepted ads (we don’t, and never will) our network would likely be more appealing to advertisers than all but O’DwyerPR.com (and we’re pretty close to them, too).  Does this mean that low budget / no budget social networks can be monetized?

I believe it is important to note that all of the other sites in this comparison have staff and budgets. PROpenMic is a voluntary and organic social network. By organic, I mean that the site perpetuates itself. The growth of the site, and the content posted in the site, is all determined by the membership. We are all volunteers. Even me.

Our audiences are somewhat similar.  All five of the other sites either charge subscription, membership fees – or, they are using their sites to drive interest in their enrollment, seminars and conferences.  PROpenMic isn’t doing any of that (for profit).  Sure, some people promote their events in our Events group, but it is hardly the same.

All of the other sites have staff devoted to their sites (and budgets) in order to populate, promote and maintain their sites (and/or organizations).  In some instances, they have paid authors/writers creating the content for their sites.  Each of the others sites (aside from PRSSA, I imagine) produces, on average, more promotional emails to their members than PROpenMic.

Overall, I’d say PROpenMic.org is a success.  Depending upon the metric you look at, we seem to be performing close to, equal to, or better than all the other sites – except O’Dwyer’s … again, we’re awfully close to them, too.

Look, none of us are buring up the internet in Top 1,000 site traffic, but that’s not the goal.  We’re all niche.  We want to reach those relatively small audiences (that’s small in a world view of Internet traffic).  So, how do we perform in comparison to one another?

Here is the breakdown…

For the graphs below, click on them and they will enlarge.

Compete.com stats…

Unique Visitors: (average per month)

propenmic.org 7,312
odwyerpr.com 8,668
myragan.com 6,225
prssa.org 5,258
communitelligence.com 3,068
holmesreport.com 2,078

Rank: (the lower the number, the better your rank)

propenmic.org 199,336
odwyerpr.com 172,873
myragan.com 227,762
communitelligence.com 410,099
prssa.org 262,202
holmesreport.com 566,512

Total Visits: (monthly average)

propenmic.org 22,918
odwyerpr.com 11,530
prssa.org 9,221
myragan.com 6,704
communitelligence.com 4,030
holmesreport.com 2,563

Page visits/views: (monthly average of per visit pageviews)

myragan.com 12.1
propenmic.org 7.5
odwyerpr.com 6.3
communitelligence.com 5.8
prssa.org 3.2
holmesreport.com 2.6

Alexa.com stats…

Note: In Alexa.com stats the lower the number, the better your site ranks.

odwyerpr.com has a traffic rank of: 232,877
propenmic.org has a traffic rank of: 291,090
myragan.com has a traffic rank of: 508,609
communitelligence.com has a traffic rank of: 550,729
prssa.org has a traffic rank of: 644,172
holmesreport.com has a traffic rank of: 670,656

Averaging the rank of both Compete & Alexa stats:

Note, again … the lower the number, the better your site ranks.

PROpenMic: 245,213 compared to…

ODwyerPR: 202,875
MyRagan: 368,185
PRSSA: 453,187
Communitelligence: 480,414
HolmesReport: 618,584

Please let us hear from you.  I’d love to know what you think, one way or the other.

Thank you to all that have made PROpenMic what it is!  I’ll do another post on the anniversary day (April 1st) thanking some very kind people that have helped along the way.

“bradjward: HEY!!!! If you had 133 characters to tell a class of PR college students something, what would it be? Tag it #jr342. Thanks!! And retweet.”

The responses started rolling in. Five pages. Over 60 responses.

[iframe http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=988531643&page=5&q=jr342 580 400]

The Tweets actually were quite good.

Update: In fact, they were so good – here is the presentation he worked up for the presentation.

Kevin Dugan, Strategic Public Relations, on @prblog, and in PROpenMic, posted about it on PROpenMic last night. Twitter Creativity, Beauty, GOLD MINE.

Kevin’s post reminded me of that experience and started my brain to spinning again. You know that’s always a scary thing. So, I thought … with people seeking advice on Twitter, what if they searched Google? So, I did.

Google is your friend. ) “best advice” for “PR students” … Yep, I went searching for knowledge from the great wizard behind the curtain.

It begs the question, like in the video below, “Where did we go for these answers BG?”

Well, my guess is … the library, or we asked someone face-to-face. What a concept. )

That said, as if it’s news to anyone … people are using online resources more and more every day. As in the case of Brad’s Twitter thread, the advice can be quite good and useful.

Let’s see if Google does a good job. You can be the judge.

Here are the top Google results:

[iframe http://www.google.com/search?q=%22best+advice%22+for+%22PR+students%22&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS266US266 580 400]

Open the search for “best advice” for “pr students” in another window, if you wish.

I was a bit surprised to find posts from this blog, Marcomblog and Forward Blog all in the top 20 results. Made me wanna do the Snoopy dance a bit, I’ll admit.

But, look deeper and you’ll find that almost all the results are relevant and do provide some good advice.

This further started my mind spinning and it reminded me of another classic I saw the other day. It came from Bob LeDrew, @bobledrew and FlackLife. Here it is, go see Let Me Google That For You, a very funny site. Bob shared that in the PRMindshare listserve, actually. I’m glad he did.

It’s a funny site and fits this discussion. When students ask questions, I often want to say, “You know, (insert name of software here) has this wonderful button in the top menu bar. It’s called “Help” and you’ll learn a lot by exploring there.”

Lessons here? There are a lot of good people online that will help you. Much of the advice you’ll find can actually be quite useful and worthwhile. That said, always be skeptical. Double check. Do your own research. Form your own opinions. The name of the blog, infopinions, comes from the realization that all this social networking and sharing really is (a) a little bit of information mixed with (b) a little bit of opinions. Skepticism can be a good thing. Be skeptical and research for yourself. Then, when you do find good info … thank the good people like Brad Ward, Kevin Dugan, and Bob LeDrew (and all the others) that enrich your life by sharing it with you.

OK, that’s how my mind works. I know. Scary.

Now, on to the video that will definitely make you think. It, too, comes from us via great contacts. Caroline Jones, @carolinejones on Twitter, who kindly shared this cool video posted by Phil Gomes in Edelman Digital’s Authenticities blog.

And, while we’re at it, here’s a presentation about Twitter as a PR tool. Good info! It comes to us from one of our favorite academic bloggers, Corinne Weisgerber, PH.D. at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. You’ll love her blog: Social Media for PR Class. Thanks, Corinne!

And, to top it all off … this presentation was even tweeted last night by @prsarahevans of PRSarahEvans.com. ;o)

Our social network for public relations students, PROpenMic.org will celebrate six months online on October 1st.

Allow me to begin by thanking all of the members. So many people have helped with advice and guidance along the way. I appreciate all of your help. I also appreciate the involvement of our volunteer administrators (in no particular order): Phil Gomes, Edelman; Kelli Matthews, University of Oregon; Tiffany Derville Gallicano, University of Oregon; Mihaela Vorvoreanu, Clemson University; Karen Russell, University of Georgia; Kaye Sweetser, University of Georgia; and, Barbara Nixon, Georgia Southern University. Not only do they help with the site, but they allow me to bother them asking questions all the time. ) I really do appreciate their contributions.

Ironically, we started on April Fool’s Day. Some people suggested there really wasn’t a need for such a site. I’ll admit that I had no idea how the site would be received. Although having thought (for a few years) about how we could create a site that truly pulled people together from around the world, I actually built and launched the site in one evening. Funny, huh?

As of this writing, PROpenMic has 2,366 members listed. They hail from well over 40 countries around the world and over 140 different colleges and universities. Further, we have practitioners from hundreds of large and small agencies all over the world. Also, you’ll find internal PR practitioners from Fortune 500 firms, state governments, nonprofits, education and much more.

I’ll write another post later about stories from PROpenMic members and how the site has helped people make connections. This post is more of a “how are we doing” in our efforts to attract an audience.

So, I thought I’d do a little research into how well we’re doing regarding traffic and compare PROpenMic’s activity to similar sites with a public relations focus. That proved to be a bit difficult, because there really isn’t any other social network site similar to PROpenMic with regard to its primary focus on PR students and faculty. So, I chose the closest examples I could find.

Below, you’ll see a comparison of PROpenMic to the following sites:

• propenmic.org
• myragan.com
• holmesreport.com
• odwyerpr.com
• communitelligence.com
• sncr.org
• higheredexperts.com

Some caveats before we begin. (Nope, I just want the numbers/graphs, please.)

These are just stats from sites that are used by others to gauge a site’s activity level. With regard to all of the stats below, we must retain perspective. Some of this is a bit of apples and oranges. The seven sites cover similar issues, but they all have a different focus with regard to who they are trying to reach and how they are going about it.

PROpenMic.org is the only nonprofit education site among the seven that never charges anything for anything. And, only two of the sites are nonprofit: PROpenMic and SNCR. ) By that, I mean PROpenMic.org has no ads, does not require a paid subscription to view, and it is not being used to sell/market other services. So, that distinguishes PROpenMic from all six other sites. But, there really aren’t any sites similar to PROpenMic, so I chose some that I feel are at least similar in some ways. The primary similarity is, of course, all seven sites have public relations as their focus, at least in part.

OK, sorry if some of that is redundant, but I feel it is important to retain that perspective. Read the following and let me know what you think. Is this surprising, or does it make perfect sense? The traffic and participation numbers / rate for PROpenMic seem to compare well to some other public relations sites. Some of them are social networks. The others are public relations news sites.

PROpenMic.org has only been online for six months (as of October 1st). The others have been online for more than a year. Some have been online for three years to almost a decade.

• MyRagan.com is at least 18 months old.
• SNCR.org dates back to July of 2005.
• Communitelligence.com dates back to May of 2004.
• HigherEdExperts.com dates back to February of 2002.
• HolmesReport.com dates back to at least February of 2001.
• ODwyerPR.com dates back to December of 1998.

Source for those dates is the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Please also note that some of them may not have been operating as networks. For instance, I don’t think HigherEdExperts.com has actually been in operation for more than three years in its present form.

Over 50% of PROpenMic.org’s membership are practitioners or faculty members. So, we aren’t exactly a predominately youth driven site.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m a bit surprised at how well we stack up against such sites as MyRagan, O’Dwyer’s and the Holmes Report.

Unique visitors to sites as tallied by Compete.com. (See graphs of these stats below.)

• propenmic.org: 6,172
• myragan.com: 6,100
• holmesreport.com: 1,900
• odwyerpr.com: 8,593
• communitelligence.com: 3,028
• sncr.org: 8,280
• higheredexperts.com: 2,035

Rank monthly from Compete.com. Compete ranks the top one million websites in the U.S. based on the number of people the domain attracts each month. Important: The lower the number, the better your site’s ranking. For instance, Yahoo’s rank is 1. They have the most traffic of all. (See graphs of these stats below.)

• propenmic.org: 216,328
• myragan.com: 218,496
• holmesreport.com: 570,293
• odwyerpr.com: 163,953
• communitelligence.com: 391,514
• SNCR.org: 169,221
• higheredexperts.com: 539,344

The number of visits made to a site. A person can only be counted as one person in a month, but can make multiple site visits. (See graphs of these stats below.)

• propenmic.org: 8,954
• myragan.com: 7,062
• holmesreport.com: 2,176
• odwyerpr.com: 9,963
• communitelligence.com: 3,195
• SNCR.org: 10,979
• higheredexperts.com: 2,035

The number of pages an average person views on each visit to a domain. (See graphs of these stats below.)

• propenmic.org: 16.0
• myragan.com: 4.5
• holmesreport.com: 3.9
• odwyerpr.com: 2.5
• communitelligence.com: 1.5
• SNCR.org: 3.2
• higheredexperts.com: 8.4

The number of minutes an average visitor spends on a site during each visit. (See graphs of these stats below.)

• propenmic.org: 05:30
• myragan.com: 03:15
• holmesreport.com: 04:12
• odwyerpr.com: 02:49
• communitelligence.com: 04:08
• SNCR.org: 03:26
• higheredexperts.com: 06:36

Alexa rankings for five sites: (See graphs of these stats below.)

• propenmic.org – 268,760
• myragan.com – 294,649
• holmesreport.com – 1,177,977
• odwyerpr.com – 267,961
• communitelligence.com – 924,497
• sncr.org – 404,336
• higheredexperts.com – 1,140,315

(Permalink)

The graphs below help illustrate the results above. I had to place them at the end because they are wider than my blog’s layout allows higher up in the post. Please note, both Alexa and Compete only allow you to compare five sites at one time, so that explains the missing results for SNCR.org and HigherEdExperts.com. But, you can follow the links in the stats above and search for those sites, if you wish.

In MarketLeap.com, I searched for the links existing to the sites. Here is the resulting link popularity check table. Note: The link popularity check determines the number of links to a site found in the search engines like: Google, AOL, HotBot, Yahoo!, FAST, AltaVista. Remember, PROpenMic.org is (a) only six months old and (b) only our first page, the front page, is indexed by search engines. (The other sites listed in the table are provided by MarketLeap so you may compare your site to others with similar link totals.)

Here is one Alexa graph from searches for the sites. We are the blue line. Look, I’m not trying to be cocky here, but note how we tend to spike way above the other sites from time to time. Some of that is due to the people that share the site with others, like Peter Shankman, for example, through his Help A Reporter (HARO) emails. Peter has sent us more members than anyone else. Many thanks for that, too.

The following five graphs are representative of results from Compete.com.

We have a very respectable length of time spent on the site per visitor. Remember, this is an average. Some stay longer, some scoot away quickly. We are the blue line, and as you’ll see, we’re ahead of all others. Pretty cool, huh.

For pages per visit, we are again way above the other sites. Our users visit almost twice the number of pages than the closest other site. We’re four times ahead of others.

Our number of unique visitors is exceeded by only ODwyerPR.com.

Our traffic rank is exceeded only by ODwyerPR.com and SNCR.org, and not by much considering the relative youth of our site.

Finally, our overall visits are higher than all other sites, except ODwyerPR.com. And, we feel compelled to remind you … they are a business with actual staff, writers and budgets. ;o) They pay people. What a concept.

First, apologies for the length of the post. Second, I think this is a good example of how an idea, with no funding behind it, can serve a niche audience and compare very well to other commercial sites.

Examples?

MyRagan.com, HolmesReport.com, Communitelligence.com and ODwyerPR.com are businesses. They have enormous resources behind them. They pay writers. They have IT staffs. They have, um … what’s the word? Money! )

MyRagan.com doesn’t charge for you to participate in their site, but it has ads (for their own products/services, like their store) and they do use email to members to market their services. Essentially, they built the site to capture an audience and market the many fee based services, seminars and more offered by Ragan Communications, like: MyRagan, MyRaganTV, Jobs and Message Boards, eNewsletters, Newsletters, eTraining and Consulting.

The Holmes Report costs $50 a month, or $295 a year, for an individual subscription.

ODwyer’s PR/Marcom costs $25 a month, or $150 a year, for an individual subscription.

Communitelligence does not charge a fee for you to participate in their site, but it does have ads and they use the site to market the many fee based services, seminars and more offered by Communitelligence Inc. You’ll see examples of their family of Web sites at that link.

Hey, I’m not faulting any of those businesses for trying to make a buck. I’m saying that you don’t have to have all of those resources – in some instances – to build a site where many people will find utility and value.

Now, SNCR.org is the Society for New Communications Research. It “is a global nonprofit 501(c)(3) think tank dedicated to the advanced study of the latest developments in new media and communications, and their effect on traditional media and business models, communications, culture and society.” And, full disclosure required, I’m a founding fellow of the organization. Bless Jennifer McClure’s heart, there isn’t much of an infrastructure behind all of her work and efforts compared to those businesses. But, look at the success the SNCR site has garnered. Again, you don’t necessarily need money to attract an audience. True, SNCR does use its site to market publications and conferences, but hardly close to the level of those other sites.

HigherEdExperts.com is the baby of Karine Joly. It, too, does not have the wealth of resources behind it in comparison to the businesses above. It is also likely one of the most niche sites of all in this list of seven. Karine has, what – maybe 20-30,000 people in the U.S. to draw from (as in Higher Education Web practitioners?). I’m probably way too high in that estimate, actually. Karine does not run ads, but does promote her own Webinars and other offerings on the site and via email.

Karine has a Web designer, a graphic designer and … well, Karine. ) She also has a great advisory board. Oh, and lest I forget … she has her great social network participants.

OK, that wraps up my overview of where we are, how we compare to other sites and, I hope, a persuasive example of how an unfunded project (I pay for everything, so I do it for as little as I can pay) can actually bring a lot of people together for a positive purpose.

What do you think?