By David Calkins
Students who are shy about asking that special someone out in biology may have a better chance, thanks to technology.
The latest in digital socializing ? thefacebook.com ? is sweeping the nation''s colleges with over 1.5 million students signed up from 300 different universities.
Created by five undergraduates at Harvard University last year, the free Web site was promoted entirely by word-of-mouth. In fact, more than half the users signed up within the past three months, the founders said.
?I think the Web site has been a success,? said Mark Zuckerberg, one of the site?s founders, in an interview with Current Magazine. ?We don?t view the site as an online community ? we bill it as a directory that is reinforcing a physical community. What exists on the site is a mirror image of what exists in real life.?
Students simply sign up at the Web site with their school e-mail. After creating a profile with a picture and personal information, students can connect to members at their own schools or, in a more limited way, at others.
Students across the nation are using the site to join study groups, meet new people, search for old friends and even look for dates.
?It caught on really fast,? said Maria Pedroza, who was a Harvard student when the site was launched.
Now a graduate student at the BYU Marriott School, Pedroza said the site has been a good way for her to keep in touch with friends both from Harvard and high school.
?People will send you a note on your birthday and you forgot you were friends with them,? she said. ?Or people I haven?t heard from since high school will add me to their friend list.?
The site can either help or hinder schoolwork, depending on how it is used. Pedroza said she has used the site?s course list to post her classes and search for classmates.
?It was really useful to get notes and study guides for the final,? she said.
However, some students say it can be an addictive way to waste time.
?It came out my senior year when everybody was working on their senior theses,? Pedroza said. ?So the senior class was always on Thefacebook. It was the worst procrastination tool ever.?
While Pedroza has not used the Thefacebook to find dates, she raised concerns about the potential privacy issues at stake.
?It?s a stalking tool,? she said, ?and a very effective one at that.?
Fortunately, the site comes with a set of privacy options that users can modify to limit the number of people who can access their profile. The default setting does not permit a user at one school to view the profile of users at other schools unless they are linked by friend-lists. People have to be approved before they can be added to a friend-list.
While Thefacebook added BYU to its directory of schools last October, it has taken longer for the phenomenon to catch on here than at most schools.
Samantha Hall, a BYU sophomore from California, has been a member of Thefacebook since November. She said she heard about it from people back home, where it is very popular.
?At most colleges, students from all grades are on the Facebook,? she said. ?But here it?s very much dominated by 2004 graduates.?