Auburn Family is a new social networking site that allows perspective students, parents, alumni, current students and fans to stay connected with everything Auburn.
Along with being able to add other friends from the Auburn Family site, family.auburn.edu members can comment on other profiles, update their statuses, upload photos and videos and create or read blogs from other members.
Campus events are posted on the Auburn Events Calendar. Campus news stories are fed through the site using Wire Eagle: Auburn News and the weekly newsletter This Week @ AU.
Each Auburn Family member page is fully customizable. The My apps feature allows applications to be added that can simplify life by linking Twitter post's with the members page or entertain by allowing members to view their current Netflix rentals. The My Music feature allows members to upload 100 songs onto their page.
The RSS feed gives members the option to deliver news from various publications straight to their page.
Communication and Journalism Department instructor Robert French oversees the project, but the work is done by students in his style and design in public relations messages class.
"Their primary responsibility is to once a week create a feature story and a video interview with individuals from any of the 13 colleges and schools at Auburn University," French said.
French said this is the kind of work that firms, agencies, state organizations and non-profits are asking of new graduates. The social network manager is the largest and newest job description that people are seeing in this field.
Director of Communications for the Office of Communications and Marketing Mike Clardy mediates the technical and marketing aspect of the site.
"The primary goal is to reach perspective students and their parents and give them a sense of what's going on at Auburn through a student's eyes," Clardy said. "They can see what student life is like, what the college and school is like, the programs, research projects, just a lot of flavor of what's going on on campus and not just athletics."
Multimedia specialist for the Office of Communications and Marketing Brock Parker assists in moderating the content allowed on the site.
"It's a chance for so many people to tap into what I feel is the heart and soul of Auburn, and that's the students." Parker said. "What is campus life like? We're really hoping that's it's going to be a great recruiting tool to a lot of perspective students. As they're juniors and seniors in high school debating on where they're going to go to college, they get a chance to go to the site. They get to see what kind of activities the students are doing, what kind of stories are here on campus, and I think that's going to be a good tool for that."
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