Rapleaf wants to help ‘Web 2.0′ you.
Posted by Brad J. Ward | Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Higher Education, Marketing, Recruitment, Research, Technology | Posted on 02-05-2008
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I just got an email from Dan at Rapleaf.com with an interesting pitch.
(Side note: I do use rapleaf.com already, and it’s an interesting concept. Throw your personal email in there and see what it finds about you. Here is my page. Feel free to rate me!)
Here’s the email:
Brad,
Rapleaf is a reverse email append service with data on approaching 100 million people, and our data includes what social networks a person is on.
Seeing that Butler has a Facebook application for following basketball, we thought it might be interesting for you to identify which of your alumni or students are on Facebook in order to promote that application to them and extend the reach of your online community.
If you or another person at Butler would be interested, we’d be honored to setup a quick phone call.
Would this be something of interest to you?
- Dan
PS: If you currently use another service for data on your alumni, we’re more than happy to run a test of our data against that data. More info can be found here: http://www.rapleaf.com/developer
and he later clarified:
We wouldn’t be collecting data from the Facebook application. You would merely send us an email list, say for example your alumni email list, and we would tell you which of those alumni are on Facebook. You could then email those alumni and promote the app to them. So at no point are we collecting data on your FB App users.
Interesting idea. I don’t think I’m at liberty to start releasing email address lists from our database, but I’m interested to hear what you all think about this idea/method of reaching alumni (or even prospective students??) Where’s Andy Shaindlin when you need him? 
If you want more information, Dan has given me permission to post his contact info here. It’s dan[at]rapleaf[dot]com.
Another side note: Dan noticed on my Rapleaf profile that my Amazon Wishlist has 4-Hour Workweek on it. He said he just read it. I haven’t read it yet, but I read Tim Ferriss’ blog and I took my first step last night: outsourcing my taxes.
I’m right here!
I got a pitch from Rapleaf today as well, and will get around to looking at it soon (I hope), since it raises a very interesting combo (mashup?) of opportunity and risk.
I started using it while I was selling Facebook Applications and code on the side to build some credibility in the marketplace since there was no rating system like eBay has.
Very interesting to see how they get all of your web presences. Punch your email in and they’ll have it all about 1 hr later.
Definitely could be a gold mine if approached cautiously, don’t you think Andy?
I see its overall usefulness, and think that for personal use it looks like a great aggregator. For organizational use, I’d like to hear how others think it could be applied (especially strategically).
Just about every modern music group has a profile on MySpace. Many of the larger groups also have social networks on their own “official” Web sites. Why? So that they can own demographic info, e-mail addresses, etc., for monetization purposes (ads, pitching new CDs, tour updates, etc.).
If you don’t create the Facebook group or LinkedIn group, someone else will and you’ll lose admin control. If it already exists, ask the admin if he/she is willing to pass it over or allow a co-admin from the university.
From my experience much of the engagement happens outside the group, particularly in social networks outside the university. I join an alumni group on Facebook for my alma mater. I notice old friends and classmates I haven’t talked to in years. I add them as friends and message them directly. I’m thinking about my alma mater.
A low number of wall posts and discussions doesn’t mean there is nothing happening because of the group. (Admittedly, though, you can’t see that activity in the closed walls of these networks – it is anecdotal.)
Before we know it the the headhunters will be creating the Ning group for _______ University Alumni…