David Teten points to an interesting article talking about how alumni relations organizations at universities feel threatened by online social networking sites.

As for online networking, third party networks are not our foes; they are potential allies in our strategic effort to 1) provide alumni with tools relevant to their real world needs and 2) garner up to date, detailed and useful data about our existing constituencies.

We should not give up trying to provide proprietary online networking tools just for alumni. In fact, there is more pressure than ever for us to provide such tools - our alumni are already comparing our services to freely available commercial sites. This means that we must exert our influence over existing third-party sites to provide us with data and perform functions our alumni will find useful. We can do this most effectively by joining together as alumni organizations to influence the further development of these sites.

We can best serve alumni by bridging the gap between alma mater and the real world. We must give them tools to link the exclusive Alumni Network with the inclusive Public Network which also includes a measurable fraction of our alumni.

It's worth a read.