If Adam Giblin and Eric Lashner become the new GUSA executives, it looks like they’ll have one less campaign promise to worry about. During the campaign, they promised to create a viable online facebook but it looks like Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg has beaten them to the punch.
Giblin and Lashner weren’t the first to propose an online facebook. Current GUSA executives Brian Morgenstern and Steve DeMan also had the idea in their campaign, and the year before Kaydee Bridges and Mason Ayer probably had the thought in mind when they put together my.georgetown.edu.
Zuckerberg’s creation, called thefacebook.com, resulted from frustrations with delays in launching an official Harvard online facebook. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week,” Zuckerberg, a Computer Science and Psychology double major, told The Harvard Crimson.
Since then, he has expanded the web site to include 20 campuses out of U.S. News & World Report-top-50 caliber.
Thefacebook.com launched at Georgetown on April 11. Since then, its membership has grown to well over half of the undergraduate student population, according to thefacebook.com spokesperson Chris Hughes.
The explosive popularity of Zuckerberg’s web site indicates student demand for an online networking resource. “I waste a lot of time on the facebook. It’s like you check the email and then you check it,” Lashner said.
But Lashner, who has 269 friends online, also sees practical uses. “It’s the most useful thing if you want to find out about people and find their AOL Instant Messenger screen names to contact them.”
For those of you who haven’t joined the club, anyone with an ”@georgetown.edu” address including faculty, alumni and staff may create a profile and post it online. Users then search for people they know at Georgetown and the other 20 campuses and add them as “friends.”
The most entertaining aspect of the site comes when users find out who their friend’s friends are and start playing six degrees of separation.
Thefacebook.com emulates its the more established cousin Friendster.com, but it is customized for student use. Though unaffiliated with the University, thefacebook.com makes class schedules available online and can group members according to which classes they are in.
The true strength of thefacebook.com is a level of exclusivity it offers its members. “It’s like Friendster except without the sketchy people” said Maria Gaspar (CAS ‘05) , who joined the site earlier last week.
But Hughes is quick to deny that the web site is elitist. “Our strategy for expansion is one in which we go to schools where students know other students,” he said. “Any college student population would enjoy using it.”
