Not just yet Another Online Network

Last week the creation of a new social network was proposed in my Online Journalism class. I have to admit that my first thoughts were along the lines of “Do any of us really need ANOTHER online network?”

Even so I went along with the idea. Mostly because the class needed to work on a project, and since I had no good alternative I did not object.

We created the network using ning.com. It was so easy to do and not at all the hassle I had predicted. By the end of the same class in which the proposal had occurred we had our new network up and running.

CommTogether is a network for all Communication students and faculty at the University of Miami. Our goal is to get the different departments at the Comm. School to work together in the good name of convergence.

And convergence is something that we definitely can become better at. As in most universities and even workplaces working with people from different departments can be a challenge. And this is where CommTogether comes in.

Using the network to establish the initial contact between all employees and students serves to familiarize all of us with each other. That is the first step. Second and most importantly, CommTogether allows us all to use the many different resources within the School of Communication for mutual benefit.

The one thing that made me critical about the idea initially was that I did not see what this network had to offer that we did not already have in our Facebook or LinkdIn networks. However,I now realize that sometimes networks can become so big and all encompassing that you lose the overview.

What is so neat about CommTogether is that it serves a specific purpose, so you don’t get all the annoying vampire requests you do on Facebook. Limiting the network to a specific group of people, I feel, will be one of the greatest strengths of this new network.

Having seen how easy it is to set up a Ning network and how beneficial such a network can be I must say that I think CommTogether will be of great value to everyone at the School of Communication…Even if it does mean that I will have to sign in and check out yet another network, daily ;-)