Pardon the article title today, but I was still in the process of getting over seeing excessive capitalization, use of exclamation marks, and internet acronyms on an “official” blog, sponsored by MIT. This morning’s Boston Globe had an article College blogs tell it like it is, about college students everyday blogs which are actually sponsored by their college, meaning it’s not only hosted and publicized on their main website, but the student is often paid for their updates!

It is an interesting approach to colleges embracing the overwhelming social web 2.0 culture that their applicants grew up on. The colleges that do this type of thing say that while people could find these types of blogs on their own, putting forward their own official versions of these blogs show that they are not afraid to broadcast their students’ lives to prospective applicants.

I checked a few examples at M.I.T., and these definitely look to me like your average college student blog, complete with grocery lists and complains about classes. Of course, you probably won’t find nearly as much mention of the excessive drinking and other activities that unofficial blogs might talk about, and I can’t blame the colleges for asking their bloggers not to mention that type of thing. Of course if I was in college and being paid $10 an hour to blog, I wouldn’t have much of a problem pruning my content either.

It seems great that admissions offices, which are usually pictured as stuffy and bureaucratic, would be willing to embrace such an unedited medium.