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CSULB
students network using www.thefacebook.com
By
Rachel Furlong
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
Cal
State Long Beach has recently been added
to thefacebook.com, an online profile-based
community where students can post photos
and information about themselves, and connect
to other students at their own school.
The
free Web site, launched last year by five
undergraduates at Harvard University has
become extremely popular with college students
all over the country. There are currently
1,539,400 users at over 335 schools, according
to Chris Hughes, one of the cofounders of
thefacebook.com.
"I'm
on there as much as I check my email,"
said Ryan Hano, a CSULB sophomore. "It's
addicting and awesome. It's a great way
to find people in your classes and just
meet new people."
Hano
heard about thefacebook.com from some friends
at other schools and thought it sounded
cool. When he checked to see if CSULB had
one, he found out that the way to add a
school was to have enough people request
it. So he went on to CSULB's site at myspace,
another online profile-based community,
and posted messages telling people to request
it. CSULB was added to thefacebook.com on
Jan. 1.
To
become a member, you must be a student,
alumni, or a faculty member with a university
email address. Once registered as a member,
you are able to set up a profile, as long
or short as you like, upload a picture to
go with your profile, join and create groups,
compile your own personal group of friends,
and search through other profiles and groups
at your school.
Delayn
Landrum, a student at CSULB, whose profile
tells visitors she is single, conservative,
and concentrating on chemistry and biology,
said she likes.
"I'm
able to communicate with my friends and
meet new ones while I'm at it," she
said.
"What
I think gives thefacebook.com its popularity
is its exclusivity," Aaron Haar, a
student at Pepperdine University and member
of thefacebook.com said, "You don't
have perverted old men or burnouts bugging
you all the time as you do on similar profile-based
communities such as myspace.com.
On
thefacebook.com, university students can
go online and meet, message and chat with
other university students from their own
institution of higher learning."
"I
log on at least once a day," said Taylor
Jerri, a CSULB student. "It's nice
because it shows you people in your classes
that are logged on."
Thefacebook.com
has a section for classes so students can
click on it see a list of all the students
taking that class for the semester.
"This
has been helpful to me in the past as far
as getting course materials and assignments
when I've missed class," Haar said.
Mark
Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard, had the
idea for thefacebook.com last winter.
"He
wanted to combine an idea for a universal
online database with an interactive social
networking interface," Hughes said,
"The idea was sort of an extension
of the traditional college facebooks with
terrible freshman ID photos and boring information.
After a few weeks and many late-night dorm-room
conversations with the rest of us —
the four guys who started out working with
Mark — thefacebook.com was released
at Harvard."
"Facebook
is yesterday's yearbook," Haar said.
"In high school when you heard someone's
name or couldn't remember who someone was,
you'd dust off the old yearbook and from
the year before and look them up. Now, you
can do it online and it's much more interesting."
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