I also agree that it would be useful to answr that question in the context of institutional use of Facebook, along the lines you have suggested.

Note that I suspect that potential students (and their parents) will ask in greater numbers “What’s the value of a University degree?” We’ll need to be able to provide answers to such questions.

Note that I don’t think that Chris G gave a complete list of the reasons why Universities (together with organisations such as JISC infoNet, JISC Digital Media and the JISC MediaHub are providing Facebook presences!

A more useful assessment would surely be to look at what universities are using Facebook for at a grassroots level. Ultimately, course directors/administrators, alumni relations people etc, are going to use the networks that are used by their target audiences. If people start abandoning Facebook, then so will the companies using it to engage with them.

I don’t like Facebook, and I’m only a member so that I can communicate with a few real friends (and family) who are users. I’d certainly much rather those friends and family used flickr for their photos, but if they made them private to “friends and family” I don’t think the effect would be much different.

What I do think is particularly obnoxious is the way Facebook has persuaded other sites to use its “Like” button, which allows it to gather information about us even when we are not using Facebook. We rarely undertand the implications, and we don’t have to click the “Like” button for a Facebook cookie (presumably containing tracking details of our visit) to appear. If any of you have a “Like” button on your site, you are contributing to this unprincipled action.

Personally I can see absolutely no reason why a University should have a Facebook page! Chris G says Facebook is good for “chatting, showing funny pictures and inviting people to parties”. Why should a University need to do that?

The discussion began with ‘walled garden’ being clearly used in a pejorative sense. I agree with Paul Walk that there can be benefits in providing a managed environment. However I think the positive aspects tend not to be considered when the term is used.

I do agree that there is a need to consider “ethical/social/political dimensions to the judgements we make“. It seems that Universities have chosen to make a decision that Facebook provide value as a marketing tool. If we feel that this is a mistaken decision there is a need to make a compelling argument, since Facebook usage within our sector does seem to continue to grow. We will also need to understand the issues if a case is to be made for using Diaspora as an institutional marketing tool.

@briankelly @lescarr It's a controlled, nurturing environment with gate, isolated from surrounding world. How is it not a 'walled garden'?—
Paul Walk (@paulwalk) September 26, 2011

Maybe it needs some elaboration but (I think!) I broadly understood what Paul meant. I think you are probably using a different (narrower?) interpretation?

Re your last point, I do think there’s more to our judgements about the services we use and/or recommend to others (both as individuals and as institutions) than simply “following the crowd”. There may be ethical/social/political dimensions to the judgements we make, or we may simply see tensions between short-term gains v longer-term goals, and such elements may lead us to a different conclusion. We should try to set the patterns we want to see, rather than simply following what is presented to us – often by parties whose interests are not compatible with our own.

Note that Matthew Rowe also wrote a Facebook export tool. I guess the situation is similar to Twitter, for which there are also 3rd party services which can be used to export structured content.

I’m interested, though, in what you mean when you say that “ is certainly a walled garden — a web within the web“. Content providers can chose access permissions for their content and content can be exported as rich content – surely these area ‘features’. Is the University of Southampton Web site a walled garden because there’ll be bits which are closed? I am interested in what we mean by the term as suchissues will reappear when, for example, Diaspora is publicly launched,

There’s no strong corporate arguments against using facebook for things facebook is good at — chatting, showing funny pictures and inviting people to parties. Not to do so (brace yourself) is cutting of your nose to spite your facebook.