Alex Harries's diary

... if there's enough room on the UPSU.net homepage for "What is UPSU?" and "Take a tour of UPSU.net" links? There's certainly a good argument for both; how many students at the University of Portsmouth - or outside of it, for that matter - know that the Union is in fact two companies - UPSU and UPEL - and they do two very different jobs under the same roof, for largely the same target audience?

And also, while we're on the subject, how many people really know how huuuge a website UPSU.net is, and what it can offer students?

I think it might be time to reassess how well the Union promotes what it actually does: there's a helluva lot going on at the Union throughout the year, and pretty much every student - whether they're resident in Pompey or a distance learner - can benefit from at least something going on here.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how we can a) streamline the galleries so they're as simple to use and update as, say, Flickrdotcom (or, for that matter, whether we should just invest in a Flickr account and put all our photos up there instead?) and b) really expand peoples' public profiles into something useful and interesting to wander around.

/al - reading standingonthebox.blogspot.com  

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Do people really want to maintain a profile at upsu.net when they may already have one at MySpace, Facebook or Orkut. You may want to get people opinion. Do people want to spend time on upsu.net when they spend it elsewhere doing something similar? 
How about trying to get a big link on the page to one of those? 
 
I expect that Flickr.com would allow u to flexibly integrate it within the site, and it may be quicker than trying to develop the existing system.

Sat, 26 May 2007

 

 

It's an interesting point. We already allow members to add links to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Bebo on their profiles because a lot of people - myself included - have a large footprint built up on at least one of those sites. 
 
Where UPSU differs - and this might be one of its strengths - is that it provides more than an social network, with lots of different activities and forms of physical interaction. 
 
How this physical presence is reconciled with what's happening online is important because I think it's important that we make it work "right" to encourage people to stay on the site and get involved with what's going on. 
 
Just, as always, my tuppence-worth though! 
 
/al

Alex Harries - Sat, 26 May 2007