Villanova Now Using Varsity Monitor

[NDSUstudent]

One local university is putting their student athletes under a social media microscope.

Villanova University is keeping an eye on the online actions of their athletes.

"We just got an e-mail last week about it -- telling us that we had to friend the Varsity Monitor on Facebook and Twitter," said field hockey player Leah High.

VarsityMonitor is an outside company that Nova recently contracted to track the activities of student athletes who play for the university.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/...138004083.html

Social Media Account Monitoring
This service includes real-time monitoring of athlete’s social media accounts, using both automated and manual analysis to watch for inappropriate, illegal, or unethical content. When inappropriate content is discovered, both the administrators and coaches will be notified. We work directly with you to match our monitoring service with your internal policies, maintaining a seamless flow between you, VarsityMonitor and the athlete.

Universal Social Web Monitoring
In addition to the Social Media Account Monitoring service, we monitor the entire social web for mentions of athlete’s by 3rd parties, providing insight into possible compliance or reputation issues before it’s too late. Many violations uncovered by social media are in fact found by 3rd party sources, including friends social media, media outlets, or blogs and our service will uncover and immediately share this information with coaches and administrators.

Social Media Guidelines and Education
A big part of effectively monitoring social media is both the creation of social media policies and education of athlete’s and department heads on social media best practices. VarsityMonitor offers on-site training and social media policy development, ensuring the most robust policies and education are employed to not only set your social media expectations, but empower your athletes with the knowledge to meet those expectations.

Web & Mobile Access
VarsityMonitor provides detailed reporting interface via both web and mobile app, along with email and text. Coaches and administrators can run historical reports on social media behaviors, pull up archived images of web pages and evaluate urgent alerts. This reporting solution is the seamless way to monitor your athlete’s social media activities.

http://varsitymonitor.com/?page_id=152

[CAS4127]

This will be something all fairly large institutions will subscribe to-->see Lehigh!

[HandoEX]

That is am interesting concept. Could prevent a ton of problems, but I wonder how the athletes and recruits feel about it?

[NFH Schlüssel]

This will be something all fairly large institutions will subscribe to-->see Lehigh!

I wonder, since Villanova & Lehigh are both private schools, if this would apply to public institutions?

[NDSUstudent]

Yeah I'm not sure if this is legal for public universities, that said the NCAA strongly suggests that all universities monitor what their student athletes say on social media and they have punished schools for a lack of oversight(North Carolina). So schools are really placed in a tough spot.

[Wally]

That is am interesting concept. Could prevent a ton of problems, but I wonder how the athletes and recruits feel about it?

I am sure there will be many athletes who will hate it and create another twitter/facebook account not using any of their identifiable characteristics. One would hope that most of the athletes/recruits see the forest through the trees and realize it can be a good thing. There are a lot of people looking for any opportunity to take down any well-known person.

[BisonAccountant44]

If it monitors their facebook page by being a friend, I wonder how it works within the current privacy settings on the site. If a player were to accept the friend request from the varsity monitor, but then block most of their pages content from it, how would that work?

Really, I would rather have the varsity monitor not be facebook friends with/twitter followers of the athletes, but still monitor their pages for anything that is public and could be inappropriate. As long as they have the proper privacy settings activated, I say let them do what they want.

[abc123]

If it monitors their facebook page by being a friend, I wonder how it works within the current privacy settings on the site. If a player were to accept the friend request from the varsity monitor, but then block most of their pages content from it, how would that work?

Really, I would rather have the varsity monitor not be facebook friends with/twitter followers of the athletes, but still monitor their pages for anything that is public and could be inappropriate. As long as they have the proper privacy settings activated, I say let them do what they want.

I believe the Lehigh football player's twitter account was private and it got out regardless. Not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that there could still be issues. Doesn't excuse what he did/said at all either.

[Twentysix]

Yeah I'm not sure if this is legal for public universities, that said the NCAA strongly suggests that all universities monitor what their student athletes say on social media and they have punished schools for a lack of oversight(North Carolina). So schools are really placed in a tough spot.

I saw on another site that Nebraska already uses it along with a few Big12 schools.

Pretty sure its just a matter of time till everywhere uses it.

Anyone else notice the player interviewed had the name Lehigh=leah high.

[Ferd]

I saw on another site that Nebraska already uses it along with a few Big12 schools.

Pretty sure its just a matter of time till everywhere uses it.

Anyone else notice the player interviewed had the name Lehigh=leah high.

Yes. I thought it was a setup.