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Durham, NC (USA Today) -- Given the role social networking played in North Carolina's football infractions, both the university and the NCAA addressed the difficulties involved in monitoring an athlete's online activities.

The NCAA announced Monday that North Carolina's football program is banned from a bowl game in 2012 and must forfeit 15 scholarships over a three-year period. The NCAA investigation found the football program had committed nine major violations involving academic fraud, improper benefits and former assistant coach John Blake acting as an agent.

As a result, the university updated its guidelines for athletes. Athletes are notified that at least one coach or administrator has been assigned to monitor sites regularly, evaluating postings that identify possible improper extra benefits or agent-related activities. The policy specifies a range of sanctions for violations, including the loss of scholarship and dismissal from the team.

UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said monitoring social media is difficult given its changing nature.

"As all these cases transpire, there's new findings and new things you have to try to prevent in the future," Cunningham said in a news media teleconference.

According to the NCAA report, the school failed to "consistently monitor the social networking activity of its student-athletes." The report stated that in one instance an athlete's site would have alerted the school to certain violations in dealings with agents and runners.

The report said, "While we do not impose an absolute duty upon member institutions to regularly monitor such sites, the duty to do so may arise as part of an institution's heightened awareness when it has or should have a reasonable suspicion of rules violations."

Britton Banowsky, commissioner of Conference USA and chair of the committee on infractions, said, "To expect the university to monitor social networking sites of all their student athletes is too much."

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UNC, NCAA Address Social Media Monitoring

Social tools debuting at the enterprise level face many pitfalls that can derail even the best laid plans. A few IT leaders speaking at the Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise Conference and Expo in San Francisco last week revealed some of these social danger zones.

Social collaboration tools from enterprise vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Salesforce can help co-workers find each other over a vast expanse of departments and buildings to work on a project. Co-workers can communicate through text, pictures, audio and video. Employee blogs and wikis form a knowledge base that lets employees find answers to questions in mere minutes.

"I answer one question for 18,000 people," says Bryce Williams, social collaboration consultant charged with making social networking pervasive at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. "I never have to ask the same question twice. If someone asks the same question, I just link" to the answer.

Yet a few missteps can trip up even the most promising social enterprise networking effort. They include a poor internal marketing effort from the outset that leads to lackluster participation, as well as employees secretly seeking to undermine social networking.

A poor first showing of a social collaboration site or tool can put an end to the technology before it has a chance to take hold. That is, a social network needs to get to critical mass quickly. Think of it as a new-age twist on Metcalfe's Law: Greater participation means more value, yet newness means there's little or no initial participation.

Dan Pontefract, senior director of learning and collaboration at Telus, a major wireless telco in Canada, tried to get out in front of this conundrum by putting together a site and video about collaboration and social tools that are coming to a computer screen near you. Called What If, this "movie trailer" was designed to inform and excite.

"Didn't go as well as it should have," Pontefract says. "People didn't have any idea what this was and got more confused. Lesson learned is that you need some of the tools" already in place.

Kevin Jones, consulting social and organizational strategist at NASA's Marshall and Goddard Space Flight Centers, had similar issues with NASA's Spacebook, an enterprise social network designed around Facebook and launched in the summer of 2009 to much fanfare.

"It failed because the focus wasn't on people," Jones says.

Spacebook's problem was that it began life as an IT project, one that didn't take into consideration an organization's culture and politics--"but that's the glue," Jones says. "No one knew how Spacebook would help them do their jobs," as opposed to an existing method of collaboration, such as email.

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Consumerization of IT: The Social Networking Problem

Along with religion, politics can be a touchy subject for polite conversation in the real world, and new research shows our online social lives mirror our real world behaviors politics and social networking sites have an uneasy relationship, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life project.

The survey was completed in February 2012 and combed information from 2,253 Americans, age 18 and over. Some introductory numbers Pew found: 80 percent of Americans use the Internet, 66 percent of those Americans use a social networking site, and of those people, 75 percent say that their friends post some sort of political content.

While some political analysts have criticized social networking sites and the Internet for being responsible for creating political echo chambers, the Pew survey seems to show that this echo chamber viewpoint may be too harsh of a conclusion. Pew found that only 25 percent of social networking users always or mostly agree with the political content posted by friends.

The survey seemed to suggest that SNS users friendship are not centered on political discussion and that many networks are not built with ideological compatibility as a core organizing principle. Users seem to shy away from political confrontation; 73 percent say they sometimes, or never agree with friends political postings, and 66 percent of those people who dont see eye-to-eye with their friends on politics tend to ignore those posts. A fifth (22 percent) of social networking users actively censor themselves politically for fear of upsetting or offending one of their social network friends.

Interestingly, a good portion of users have been surprised by their friends political leanings. The survey found that 38 percent of SNS users learned their friends held different political beliefs than they thought; this typically happened with Democrats, liberals as well as those with very conservative views.

And if youve ever thought of unfriending someone for being too political zealous, youre not alone. At least 18 percent of social networking site users have decided to block, unfriend or hide someone based on politics. Usually, the top reasons for unfriending are for hyper-frequent political posting, for offensive posts, or for argumentative behavior. Typically the blocked friend was a distant friend, an acquaintance or someone theyve never met in the real world. Demographic-wise, liberals tend to block more: 28 percent of liberals have blocked, unfriended or hidden, while only 16 percent of conservatives and 14 percent of moderates have acted this way.

These numbers dont necessarily mean that politics is taboo. Social networking sites can still be a hot bed of political conversation, according to Pew, especially during campaign seasons. Politicos recent team up with Facebook to measure GOP candidate buzz somewhat confirms Pews point. 47 percent of SNS users have hit the like button to affirm a friends political comment and 16 percent have friended or followed someone based on similar political views: Democrats tend to affirm more with comments than Republicans or Independents. All in all, the Pew survey says that friends sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, inside social networking sites, but tend to ignore any little political blips of annoyance to continue on with friendships.

Via Pew Internet

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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Pew study: Social networking sites' users are uneasy around political postings

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Do social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have a liberal bias?

"Internet users who describe their political ideology as moderate or liberal are more likely than conservatives to use social networking sites," a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project says.

Pew divided its study between the overall population and the population of internet users. Among the latter, 74 percent of those identifying themselves as liberal use social networking sites -- as compared to only 60 percent who identify themselves as conservative are on social networking sites.

When expanded to the general population, the gap narrows slightly. Some 60 percent of those identifying as liberal use social networking sites, while 49 percent of conservatives fit that bill.

Does this add more fodder for complaints that the media is an elite, liberal enclave? Does it mean conservatives need to mount a big social media campaign?

Or maybe it just means liberals are in love with themselves, so they want to post about their lives.

(Editing by Chris Michaud)

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Facebook, Twitter users skew liberal, study finds

NBA players are showing their social networking savvy by utilizing Twitter and Facebook to communicate with each other and to fans about games and their lives. The players are using these platforms to respond to comments from fans about games and performance and even to each other regarding issues around the NBA community including wishing each other well when injuries occur or players are in a slump.

The NBAs Minnesota Timberwolves have a player that is getting just such attention. Ricky Rubio, one of their point guards has been in a bit of a slump. He currently has an average Player Efficiency Rating but has been losing the ball with a very high 22 percent turnover rate and has been shooting only 35 percent from the floor. Not good if you are a point guard.

So when Rubio injured his ACL on Friday night in a game against the LA Lakers there was a flood of legitimate and heartfelt sadness and sympathy for the rookie from his colleagues on the the court. A truly tough break with NBA playoffs still to be played and the excitement of March Madness in the air. Ricky will be working on his recovery and return but its heartening to know that the NBA community is so caring and that they are willing to communicate with each and with fans through these social networking platforms.

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NBA Players Big On Social Networking