University, C-U look to Twitter use

While the cities of Champaign and Urbana have signed in to the social networking craze, University officials say they are still weighing the benefits of services like Twitter and Facebook.

Todd Short, director of emergency planning for the University, said the Division of Public Safety is just starting to look into the viability of using Twitter for notifying students about emergency situations. He said the University already uses nine different ways to notify students of emergency situations.

"We try to use the most mechanisms to reach out to the largest number of people," Short said.

He added that the University is looking into using Facebook pages to provide updated information during an emergency. "I see this as a potential tool that could be used to provide additional information as the situation evolves," Short said.

City officials say their pages are filled with information about events, meetings of city commissions, and other local information.

"Having a presence on Facebook is a good way to reach a lot of people at once," said Lisa Bralts, economic development specialist for the city of Urbana.

Bralts said the city is mindful that a large percentage of its population is students, and city officials are trying to reach out to people in ways that they are accustomed to receiving information.

Like Urbana, the city of Champaign uses Twitter to post information about events and news affecting residents. Paul Kaiser, webmaster for the city, said the city was initially hesitant to use social networking sites because of concerns that communications could be showing up alongside questionable advertising content.

Kaiser said that by December 2008, the Champaign News-Gazette, the Mattoon Journal-Gazette and several other media outlets were using Twitter to post breaking news. He said the city's decision to use Twitter was also influenced by the number of cities and counties using Twitter successfully nationwide.

"Twitter had no advertising to be concerned with, and following the city's specific Twitter feed would result in only the city's communications being viewed — no other questionable content would appear directly in the feed," Kaiser said.

Bralts said she hoped that the city of Urbana's social networking Web presence would not only reach out to students, but a larger segment of the general population.

Kaiser said the city of Champaign still maintains e-mail subscription lists, which provide the same news notifications announced on their Twitter feed.

"Some folks don't know what a Twitter feed is, or perhaps don't care. Many people still subscribe to our subscription lists to receive news notices," Kaiser said. The city does not have plans to create a Facebook page in the near future due to concerns of keeping the page updated, he said.

Short said the University has financial considerations that need to be taken into account before implementing services like Twitter or Facebook. He said although these accounts are free, integrating them with the existing system is not.

"We are still exploring its viability and associated cost," Short said, adding that actually creating the accounts would not be an issue. "The accounts are easy to set up, so that's not a problem."