A new social media presence “Overheard at ACU” is retweeting and posting what students at Abilene Christian University are talking about.
The site’s administrators trawl students walls and tweets, and then post what they say on its on page. Students are also able to post what they heard on campus themselves.
Scott Kilmer, director of Online Marketing, said the site is not being administered by any university official but is still an interesting forum of student voices.
“It is not the voice, in an official sense, but we have many people following it to get a feel of what students are thinking,” Kilmer said. “When people have something to say they go to social media sites, and by reading what they say we can get a feel of the general mindset of how people are feeling and what’s going on here.”
Overheard at ACU’s Facebook page is liked by more than 300 people and follows more than 180 ACU faculty, staff and students on Twitter.
One of its Twitter followers Will Foster, junior education major from Mesquite, really likes the idea of the site but hope it does not get spammed.
“I’ve read several entries and a couple of them are pretty funny,” Foster said. “But I can see it being quickly overrun with people just tweeting whatever. It has the potential to be really cool, but only if the administration does a good job regulating what gets put up.”
Emily Kay Taylor, sophomore Biblical text major from Arlington, likes the Facebook page of Overheard at ACU because it is more relevant to her life than other Facebook posts.
“Most things in my news feed is stuff that doesn’t really effect me,” Taylor said. “So I liked Overheard because I hoped that things people said around campus would make my news feed more entertaining.”
“Overheard at ACU” isn’t the only website anonymously created about ACU, Kilmer said.
“A couple of years ago a student tried to set up an almost identical site. Things like this pop up annually almost like clockwork. Especially around major events like Homecoming or Sing Song,” Kilmer said. “The concept has stayed the same while the forums of social media have evolved over the years, it used to be sites like blogs and now it’s tweets.”
There are many “overheard” sites around the Internet, ranging from what people are saying at Harvard or New York City, to what is being overheard at the beach.
