This is a good discussion. Taking it a step beyond Twitter, when our university was going through a name change a couple of years ago, we made a conscious decision that I would be the sole author and thereby the official “voice” of the name change process through a blog we created for the express purpose of sharing updates about the name change and gathering input. (The site is still online at http://namechange.mst.edu but is inactive.) This approach was important because the name change was a controversial issue and we thought it was important for the university to give alumni, students, etc., a venue to express their views on the process, but also give them an individual to connect with.

Over the months of administering that blog, I developed several contacts with alumni who were at first disgruntled and opposed to the name change, who are now if not totally sold on the change, at least not totally alienated from the university because they had an individual to talk to, vent to, etc. They figured out that I would respond and listen, forward their concerns to other administrators, and become the “ear” if not the face of the university.