Victorville Daily Press: Students create bookless yearbook

Students at Goodwill Education Center in Victorville, CA dumped the idea of a bound yearbook for friends and classmates to sign at the end of the year in favor of a CD edition. My first question was "how do you sign a digital yearbook?" They've thought of that too...the CD will also come with a notepad inside the case, so students won't miss out on the time-honored tradition of signing each other's yearbooks.

I like my yearbooks. I guess I'm just too old fashioned However, if you're going to do a digital yearbook, why not take a page from CD-to-web marketers, and have a social networking website hosted by the school, for each class year. You could throw the CD in five years from now, click on someone's picture, and be brought to the website that shows you what they're doing now and how to get in touch with them. Savvy social networking companies such as friendster and classmates.com could sign multi-decade deals with schools to be information aggregators and providers. Part of the cost of the 'digital yearbook' would include membership to the school's social network online for a number of years...after which you could renew if you wish.

This could be an interesting business model for colleges as well. Those schools that have super alumni networks like USC could add value and increase endowments by providing alumni networking as a service.