A Truly Digital University?

U.S. News and World Report published its Top 20 universities and liberal arts schools today. As expected, our Columbia ranked in the top 5 (#4 to be exact..), but where does it stack up in the digital space, specifically social media?

Lucky for us, Mashable took the liberty of surveying the top universities and providing some high-level stats on the competition. Here's a sneak peak at what they found:

• Facebook: It's no surprise, Harvard has a massive Facebook following (~699K) followed by Stanford (226K). But after these two giants, the numbers trail off. Duke comes in third with 88K. Columbia comes in towards the lower half with about 25K Facebook "likes".
  
• Twitter: Harvard and Stanford are the top two as far as Twitter followers for the main university page.. but would you believe that Columbia doesn't have a main university handle? There are a number of smaller Twitter accounts for the university (@CU_Spectator, @GoColumbiaLions) but no central university account. Odd, no?
  
• YouTube Videos: Where Columbia does fare well is YouTube videos (619 as of today), putting it fourth after MIT, Stanford and Yale respectively.. But there are only about 4,200 subscribers. What's the point of generating so much content if nobody wants to watch it? Feels like there's an opportunity here.

For a full view of the article, as well as the liberal arts stats, check out this link.
http://mashable.com/2011/09/13/social-media-universities-colleges/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29#view_as_one_page-gallery_box2347