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Facebook is clearly the dominating force in social media to connect with everyone who you know or knew at some point in your life, and it works exceedingly well at what it does to allow people to interface with lots of different social groups in one digital setting.
Notably excepted from the rule, however, are teachers and students. Among my teacher friends, several use an alias- or have abandoned the social network entirely for fear of being “found” or tagged in un-teacherlike posts. Declining friend requests from students or teachers also presents an awkward situation for those involved, as it’s deemed unfriendly to decline to connect with a friend on such networks.
Edmodo is a social network that seeks to bridge that gap, claiming a user base of 4.6 million globally- students, teacher and parents- offering a Facebook-like interface for education-related connections. And Thursday, the company got an infusion of $15 million to grow the service. The venture capital firms of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and former Facebook vice president Matt Cohler led the funding, and Cohler said the educational niche sets Edmodo apart in the space:
“People aren’t using it in a social context. People are using it to share content with other teachers, they’re using it to do homework assignments and grade assignments and manage their classrooms. It’s quite a unique and important offering.”
Previously, Edmodo raised $6 million from Learn Capital and Union Square Partners.
[WSJ]
