I just read the Time article How Facebook Is Affecting School Reunions, and I was reminded, once again, of the value of information.  Way back in 2003, I wrote a blog post on agile content that began:

"Information has become a key asset—if not the key asset—in most organizations.  Just about every company is really in the information business.  Let that sink in for a minute."

The next month, in Thanks for the (Corporate) Memories, I noted how a Harvard Business School publication had nicely reinforced this idea by stating:

"Knowledge is the new capital, but it's worthless unless it's accessible, communicated, and enhanced."

Fast forward to 2009.

Today's Time article quotes Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association on the effect of Facebook playing an increasingly significant role in planning reunions:

"It's going to affect donations," says Shaindlin. "We've lost our monopoly over the data on how to communicate with schoolmates. We need to step back and figure out how to remain relevant, because there may be some point three or five or seven years from now when we're going to hold a reunion and almost nobody is going to sign up." (emphasis mine)

So, Caltech's Alumni Association is not really so much in the organizing-reunion business as it is in the information-about-who-goes-to-reunions business.  The business value of organizing reunions is not actually to have reunions, or even to make money organizing reunions.  The real business value is ensuring that the alumni association maintain detailed knowledge of schoolmates from whom donations can be solicited.

[Note: there is one upside to all this; Facebook is proving disruptive to classmates.com.  Thanks to Facebook connectivity among my own schoolmates, I have been able to completely purge my identity from classmates.com.  And for that, my inbox thanks me.]

[Note 2: When finding the link for classmates.com complaints at consumeraffairs.com, I noticed their tagline is "knowledge is power."  Nice tie-in.]