thefacebook seems to be this year's 'next big thing' on campus. It combines the successful idea of software developed for multiple campus use, like dailyjolt.com, with software that facilitates computer mediated social networking and interaction, like orkut.com, with the ability to send messages, like any chat software.
Mark Zuckerberg created thefacebook.com to help residential students identify members of other residence halls (Current Magazine, 2004).
The idea for the website was motivated by a social need at Harvard to be able to identify people in other residential houses—Harvard is a fairly unfriendly place. While each residential house listed directories of their residents, I wanted one online directory where all students could be listed.
thefacebook calls itself “an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges and universities” (Zuckerberg, 2005). Participants register for thefacebook through their own campus; for example the authors have all registered through the Indiana State University site at http://indstate.thefacebook.com. This provides users with a local base for social interactions. As of this publication date thefacebook.com is available on more than 300 campuses and users have the opportunity to expand their computer mediated social network beyond their own campus using the ‘global’ feature built into the easy to use web interface. It only took a moment to learn that Studentaffairs On-line Editor Gary Malaney was not a registered user at the University of Massachusetts, and that Professor Diane Cooper has been registered at the University of Georgia since December 4, 2004. When connected to students or faculty at other institutions there are restrictions; you may only send messages and view limited information from their profile. Professor Cooper may not join the Student Affairs and Higher Education group on my campus.
thefacebook offers students the opportunity to become connected to thousands of students and faculty and to interact with their current friends who may be registered with thefacebook. Each user creates a profile containing contact information, major or profession, courses, high school, and a photograph. Users may also add information to a personal profile including favorite movies, music, and a favorite quote, as well as their relationship and dating status. All of the information is then available to others on their own campus. Each user creates a My Friends list adding from among registered users. To be added to a My Friends list each person must give permission to be added to your My Friends list. This protection feature can keep people from adding random students to increase their Friend count. Users can browse friends of friends, view their profiles, photographs, and interests, and add friends of friends to their My Friends list, with permission. In this way each user is connected to others through a web of friends.
Students may join or create groups. These groups can range from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer Rocks" to “parking on campus sucks.” Students can use the group message board feature to voice their frustrations or just find other individuals who feel the same way, much like blogs (Wodarski, 2004). The My Groups feature allows participants to be involved in multiple interest-based communities. Hate groups that focus on a specific person or a group are expressly forbidden.
While thefacebook is a free service, supported by advertising, each University must be signed up for the service. A student on each campus must initially set up the service, which is not difficult, but must be done. Once the set up process is complete students may sign up using their school email addresses; school addresses are used to keep non-students from accessing the information. On campuses that allow alumni/ae to keep a campus e-mail account these individuals may then participate using their campus e-mail address.
One unique feature of thefacebook is the poke option, and there is no explanation on the web site for the poke option. You choose to poke someone and they can either ignore it or poke you back. The poke signifies no more than a digital 'howdy'; it is like tagging someone your high school hallway and may be similarly perceived as an on-going annoyance.
The mechanics of thefacebook are straightforward and it uses familiar web based forms and techniques. Similar residence hall oriented social networking web sites, though much less sophisticated, has been tried but limited to a local campus (Barratt, et al., 2003). thefacebook has significant advantages over locally developed software if only from popularity. The software is stable and appears to be scalable to include multiple campuses. One disadvantage to thefacebook over locally developed social networking software is the national advertisements that replaces what could be local student development and learning messages.
Following are two stories by graduate students in student affairs and higher education on their initial adventures with thefacebook.
Justina's Story
I was sitting with a few students at dinner recently talking about random problems and situations occurring in their lives. All of a sudden the conversation went from being nervous about internship phone interviews to how many friends they have on thefacebook.com. Oblivious to this phenomenon, I asked for an explanation about all the excitement. I could not get a straight answer from one person. The five women who I ate with just started talking at once about being addicted, looking for friends, being connected, poking people, and joining groups. With my head in a whirlwind, I asked how this site started, who could join, and why is it addicting? The women insisted that the only way for me to really understand the thefacebook was to join. After our forty minute dinner discussion, I was still not sold on the idea. I kept thinking that I was just too busy with graduate school and job searching to even have time to check my email account, let alone create a friend-gathering social networking web account. They continued to insist to try it out, and I could tell by their tone of voice that they really wanted me to become as excited as they were. In their words, "It would be fun!"
After several hours of recuperating from my students’ high jolt of “thefacebook” energy, my curiosity got the better of me. As I prepared for my usual 10:30 p.m. bedtime on a Wednesday night, I started feeling old and thought maybe the website would make me “cool” even if I go to bed early. As I registered my account, I began over-analyzing my information. Which email account do I use? My student account or my staff email? Which phone number? Which office, apartment or cellular number? How personal should I get for the “About Me” section? There are just some things students do not need to know about me. By this point, I was rethinking my motivation to be curious about my students and thefacebook.
Once I completed my profile to my satisfaction, I started looking for “friends.” I did not know where to begin. At the bottom of my new profile was the section for groups and the instructions “click here.” I soon found myself trying to join my sorority, Alpha Chi Omega. I requested to join the group, hoping thefacebook website would say that I was a member and was connected with my campus sisterhood. I became disappointed when nothing occurred. So I started clicking on different student pictures. After about ten minutes, I became frustrated because I just did not understand. How do I become friends? The students I spoke with said that in minutes they were connected to 20, 30, even 50 people.
So I went straight to my student resources for thefacebook, I logged into my “work” AIM account to see if any of my students were online. Soon enough, a staff member set me straight by explaining step by step how to ask people to be friends. So I was well on my way, looking up different student employees to “ask to be friends.” Once I exhausted my list of staff members, I looked at their friends list to see if I recognized anyone. I began reading about their interests and looking at the different pictures. I began recognizing many of the students. Some were staff members; others were students I met with to discuss policy violations. After about an hour, of what seemed like doing nothing, I was friends with two staff members and connected to fifty people.
I did not understand how a website that has pictures of students from across my campus could be so fascinating and consuming. I soon found many of my student employees bringing laptop computers to work and spending most of their receptionist shifts logged into thefacebook. I was even spending 10-15 minutes during my office hours confirming my friendships with students on the site. For the most part, I was spending more time mediating arguments over the usefulness of thefacebook. I could definitely see different types of problems associated with students spending large amounts of time logged in to thefacebook.
First, the obvious problem is students spending hours on the website searching for people they recognize or with whom they have common interests. It is a matter of recognizing the classmate you never had the courage to speak to in person. But on the site you immediately find out that after the fifteen weeks of going to the same class and not talking, you both like the same hobbies or television shows. The concern is spending hours trying to see how many people you could become friends with even if you do not ever plan on spending face-to-face time together away from the computer or college campus. The problem is that students can spend hours communicating with people and simulating intimate relationships using technology. More students are using their free time searching for many friends instead of cultivating and nurturing one intimate relationship with the person standing right next to them. I can only wonder if the time spent on thefacebook will continue to consume my students as the semester moves on, or as warm weather sets in if they will get distracted.
The second problem is conflict. I have experienced several students and staff members getting in heated arguments over thefacebook. One side views this website as an amazing invention to help with communication while the other side argues the harm done because of the lack of communication. Is this the new age of computer mediated communication where you need a computer to help you find friends with the same interests? Whatever happened to taking the risk of being rejected by someone face-to-face when you asked to go on a date? Those in favor to thefacebook believe that a person could still feel the same level of rejection when he or she requests another to be friends and does not receive permission. However, students request friends a handful at a time; could students simply forget who they asked and lose track of who rejected them? If so, then students do not have to deal with the challenges of taking risks to communicate. If you do not share the same current interests, then you would not learn that you share the same values and a compatible personality with your fellow classmate, roommate, or coworker. Whatever happened to opposites attract? What happened to people having civil conversations including the multiple ranges of emotions, voice tone, the old-fashion facial expressions and body language?
April's Story
One day I was sitting in my office and one of my RAs was working the front desk so I went out to talk with him and see how things were going. At the desk I noticed that he had his laptop computer with him and was logged on to something he called thefacebook. He told me just how addicting this site was, so I asked him to explain it to me a little. In a somewhat surprised tone, he said I really can not believe that you do not know what thefacebook is. He told me that the website allows College and University students from across the country to connect to friends, and through friends, to friends of friends. He continued to inform me that he was connected to thousands of people and had over a 100 friends at ISU. He told me that I should “totally get on it,” and that I would be "addicted in no time."
My RA’s enthusiasm about this webpage very much piqued my interest in just what it was all about, so I went to my apartment a little later to sign on to thefacebook.com. When I first registered for the site and was filling out my profile I noticed that this site asked for an array of personal information, from phone number to where you lived, to your home address, to what high school you attended, and so on. The first thing that popped into my head was there was no way that I was going to provide this unknown website with that much personal information. Then I started to think back to my own recent years as an undergraduate student and realized that I would have been like the students in thefacebook who provided that information without even contemplating who would see it or what they could do with it. After registering and setting up a limited information profile, I started searching through the users at Indiana State. I located some of my classmates and added a few people as “friends” and logged out until later that evening. When I logged in later I found that I had people waiting to add me to their friends list and found that through the few people I had added to my friends list I was connected to hundreds of students at ISU. After being on thefacebook for a little less than two weeks I had collected over 50 friends at ISU and a few friends at other schools. Through the people on my friends list I am connected to close to 1100 students at ISU.
Every day I can sit in my office and listen to the students talk at the front desk or as they pass my office hear them talk about how they think thefacebook is the best thing ever. Recently I heard a student talking about how she was really "addicted to it" and that she could be logged in for hours just searching the entries and looking for people she knows. Then the next words out of her mouth were that "It was like AIM. It just sucks you in." Not only are these two internet services addicting to her, they help each other because there is a link from thefacebook to AIM. There is an option in thefacebook for you to add a link to your AIM profile that allows users to add you to their friends list by just looking at your profile on AIM and clicking one hyperlink. On seeing this feature I immediately went to my AIM list and started looking at the profiles of some of my students. I noticed that a large majority of them had in fact added the AIM hyperlink to their profiles.
Students' stories about thefacebook are endless, the students are utterly in awe at the fact that our University is on thefacebook now, they could not be happier about having it available on our campus. thefacebook may just be today’s fad, but it has the qualities of a service that could be used for many years to come. The idea that I might be able to search on thefacebook in 10 years and find people I graduated from college with is an awe inspiring idea.
Some Final Thoughts
The 'about' section of thefacebook website lists 118 articles going back to March of 2004, mostly from campus newspapers. A google news search lists nearly 100 news articles in the past two weeks, including one from our campus. The articles typically describe thefacebook and include stories from users. Commonly students describe thefacebook as "addicting" however it is unlikely that good sampling technique or qualitative methodology was used to elicit these student quotes. An occasional article about thefacebook contains a caveat that it may lead to significant time wasting for students, and the rare article mentions issues with posting personal information.
There are at least two significant issues involved in discussing thefacebook. The immediate issue is the impact on students’ development and learning, and consequently on students’ persistence and success. Important discussions need to continue about the nature and benefit of computer mediated communication and add thefacebook to the ongoing discussions about e-mail, chat, and blogs. Computer mediated communication has a new added dimension that includes computer mediated social networks.
A second systems oriented issue about thefacebook focuses on the reasons for its success. Is thefacebook meeting a perceived social network and interpersonal need for students? Increasing the size of students' social networks is one factor in students’ involvement with campus organizations. The popularity of thefacebook may imply that current social networking mechanisms are inadequate and as a result students seek out computer mediated methods of expanding their social network. Is the risk of meeting someone on-line perceived as lower than the risk of meeting someone face-to-face? Are the consequences of difficulties in these on-line relationships any less important than the consequences of difficulties in face-to-face relationships? The number of important questions about student development and learning and computer mediated communication and social networking that need to be answered with good methodology are staggering and are growing.
While we may not like winter, there is not much we can do to prevent it. While we may have misgivings about the negative consequences of thefacebook, it is a fact of life on campus today.
References
Barratt, W., Corn, A., Costello, P., Couture, R., Harkness, S., & VanLue, A. (2003, March). Integrating On-Line and Interpersonal Residence Hall Communities. Paper presented at the American College Personnel Association Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN.
Current Magazine (2004). Exclusive interview with Mark Zuckerberg: The face behind
thefacebook.com. Retrieved January 30, 2005, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6596533/site/newsweek/
Wodarski, K. (2004). Attack of the blogs. Studentaffairs On-Line, 5(3), Retrieved January 30, 2005 from http://studentaffairs.com/ejournal/Summer_2004/AttackoftheBlogs.html
Zuckerberg, M. (2005). thefacebook.com. Retrieved January 30, 2005, from http://thefacebook.com/about.php
