While your institution might not be ready to get its profile on MySpace, the popular social networking website, you should consider trying to get your news in front of its millions of members.
MySpace has just launched the beta version of its news service: MySpace News.
The FAQ of the news service explains that, “MySpace News aggregates news from around the web and provides MySpace users with the ability to vote on what they think is most interesting.”
The current version of MySpace News categories includes “Education.”
What are the criteria to be included in the pool of websites used by this new service?
- The source needs to topical – so any news feed about your institution research or athletics team might make the cut. But, I guess even general news from big universities might get a chance to be retained by MySpace.
- The source should be published regularly and have a core audience.
- You get extra credits if other news sources link to your site.
Anyway, it just takes a minute to submit your news feed or blog via their online form, since they only ask for the name of the source, its web or feed address and its news category.
And, if you work for an institution that doesn’t want to be associated at all with MySpace but ends up with its news there, you can also ask the social networking website to remove your feed from its pool by using this online form (you’ll have to provide more information in this case).
I’d be interested to find out if some of you get their news indexed by this news service. So, if you do, please leave a comment below to let us all know.