A #community of Hoosiers

Whether or not you’re excited that we’re the generation who tweets things before we’ve had the time to fully process them, IU is fully supporting social media taking over the world. And that’s actually pretty cool.

Instead of shaming us because half of the time we have our heads buried in our Twitter and Facebook feeds, our University realizes we’re not just hashtagging dumb things and posting #ThrowbackThursdays. We’re also building an online community of Hoosiers.

As acceptance letters go out to new Hoosiers during the next couple months, prospective students will receive shiny crimson envelopes with #IUSaidYes across the back.

They’re then encouraged to tweet, Instagram and Facebook a photo with their acceptance letter, taking their first steps as part of Hoosier Nation. They may even get retweeted by @IUBloomington, the most followed Big Ten school on Twitter with 81,000 followers and counting.

But the #IUSaidYes acceptance letters are just the tip of the social media
iceberg.

Our Instagram account — also @IUBloomington — is No. 5 in followers and No. 3 in user engagement.

Our Pinterest site — which is one form of social media I’ve yet to brave for fear of wedding or baby fever — tops out at more than 23,000 followers. That’s more than half of our school’s population.

For a University just shy of its 200th birthday, IU is a rather in-vogue institution.

But that’s because the IU community of teachers and students realizes that being a Hoosier is more than just living on campus for four years and attending classes, tailgates and bar crawls.

Who among us has resisted Instagramming our favorite part of campus as the leaves change, the snow falls or the trees bloom? These posts are usually accompanied by some form of the phrase, “I live on the most beautiful campus in America.”

And we’re right. We do live on the most beautiful campus in America. Sure, we’re a bit biased, and most of us probably haven’t seen more than a handful of American college campuses, but we know we’re right anyway because this is IU.

I’d also bet a hefty sum that every single student at IU has taken some class where they could follow a class Twitter or needed to use their own Twitter account to interact with their teacher and fellow classmates.

This column will end with a sentence prompting you to follow me on Twitter, because this allows you, the audience, to interact with what I have to say.

Critics may scoff at our “Now! Now! Now! Me! Me! Me!” frame of mind, but I applaud IU for jumping on board and realizing the potential for Hoosier Nation to reach every corner of the campus, country and world on social media.

IU has gone viral, for better or for worse. But I’m confident it’s for the better.

­—wdmcdona@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Dane McDonald on Twitter @W_DaneMcDonald.