Further example of a company using Web 2.0 – Eurocentres

Eurocentres is a global language school which located in 31 areas worldwide such as Australia, Japan, South Africa, Europe and the US.

For an educational organisation, sharing information and interacting with students are critical important. Eurocentres  is adopting a social networking  and video sharing platform to improve their business reputation as well as provide a platform for the students. The organisation is currently using Facebook (link here) and Youtube (link here) as their Web 2.0 tools.

Although Eurocentres has had an offical website, it cannot fulfil the organisation’s new business objective: Enterprise 2.0

§

Firstly, Eurocentres has built a Facebook Page which owns 1,855 fans by 19 Oct 2009. The page contains several main items: Wall, Information, Boxes, Agenda, Photos, Reviews, Discussion, and About.

1. Wall
This field allows the organisation to post their own messages, and also allows the students/fans/guests to post message, comment and interact with each other …etc. There are too many functions can be used on ‘wall’.

2. Information
Eurocentres just simply places an offical website URL in here. But the organisation puts the introduction on ‘About’, and it is specified on #8.

3. Boxes
The use of boxes in Facebook is to store the Facebook applications (apps). Eurocentres places a video in this field.

4. Agenda
Eurocentres publishes the activities such as trip in this field. Tell the participants about what, when and where of the activities.

5. Photos
It contains the branches photos which come from the different locations worldwide. This also solve the need of photo sharing objective.

6. Reviews
The students (normally the graduated) are free to write and a review and to rate on this field. It can be a natural reference for the potential students.

7. Discussion
The students are also free to create a new topic to discuss with each other. The use is similar to a web forum. Eurocentres has started a few topics such as ‘Tell your thoughts, Visa information, and FAQ”.

8. About
Eurocentres posts the organisation’s introduction in here.

In addition, Eurocentres has also raised some events on Facebook, the function can collect how many people will attend the event and can be connected to the students’ wall.

I can see that Eurocentres is successful to adopt this social networking service. Because their fans (the graduated students) are still increasing everyday. This means that the students would like to keep in touch with the organisation even they are graduated. The further benefit is that it can be a way for the students to find their classmates. And then the community will become bigger and bigger.

§

Eurocentres also utilises Youtube Channel as its exclusive video stream centre.  The videos in here differ from the videos on Facebook. Eurocentres puts several promotion videos on Facebook, while they store a series of video called “Video Competition” which come from the different branches.  I think this is an good idea because the purpose of the videos should be separated. However, I feel the number of the videos is too short. It should provide more about the teaching in the class.

In conclusion, although Eurocentres is just using 2 services for adopting Enterprise 2.0, it is fair enough to their clients. This is probably because Facebook provides many useful functions to help the organisation to achieve their E2 objectives. And the benefit for the students who are already the member on Facebook is that they do not need to jump out to the other websites to be participated in multiple communities.