thefacebook.com Serves as Salve’s Alternative Yearbook

By: Jandee Ferland
Posted In: News

Figuring out the meaning behind “poking” and agonizing over what to write on a friend’s “wall” have become new puzzles for many members of the Salve Regina University community in the past month.

These new terms are part of a jargon that was introduced when Salve was added to the network of colleges and universities on www.thefacebook.com.

According to the website, “Thefacebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges and universities.”

However, this definition does not even begin to describe the impact on the college campuses that participate in thefacebook. The network can be used to keep in touch with friends, communicate with other students and members of the campus community, and find out various pieces of information that is posted on individual profiles.

The views and uses of thefacebook are different from person to person and school to school.

According to www.thefacebook.com, the site was created by a group of undergraduates at Harvard University. The goal of the site was to create a network among the students at Harvard in order to serve a social need on the campus.

From there, the site expanded to include other schools that were socially connected to Harvard through the friendships of students. By November 2004, about 300 schools had networks on thefacebook and nearly one million people were using the services. These numbers continue to grow as schools are steadily added to the network.

It only took a few hours on Tuesday, March 1st for word to spread that Salve Regina University was added to this list of schools. By Tuesday night, over one-hundred Salve students had created profiles on the site and on Wednesday morning, thefacebook was a main topic of conversation across the campus.

Salve was added to thefacebook after an application with basic information about the school was sent to the site and interested students requested that the school be added to the network.

A few Salve students found out about thefacebook through friends at other participating schools and worked with the Student Government Association to send out the application to get Salve accepted and put on the network.

Any student that had made a request on the site for Salve to be added to the network could choose to have an email sent to them announcing when the school was added. For students that had put in requests, this email came on March 1.

Since that time, thefacebook has spread quickly throughout the campus. Currently 1,345 members of the Salve network have created profiles. This figure includes current students, alumni, faculty and staff. Students are the predominant users of thefacebook resources.

The introduction of thefacebook to the campus has brought new tools for communication as well as various concerns about some features.

Tony Vellucci, a student that helped with the process of bringing the facebook to Salve said that he thinks “it brings a greater sense of community to students.”

Thefacebook makes it easy to search for people and ways to communicate with other people on campus and also friends at other schools.

However, these same features that are great for communication also have brought some concern. One of the main fears about thefacebook is stalking and access to the personal information that is in individual profiles.

Despite this concern many users believe that the site is generally secure because information that is put on profiles is controlled by the user and can only be accessed through members of the university and friends from other schools that are accepted by the user.

In an interview with Current Magazine that is listed on the website, Mark Zuckerburg, one of thefacebook creators, states that “… it’s surprising, but we have actually received far less complaints about stalking than we otherwise would have expected.”

Another concern is the amount of time spent on thefacebook and how this extra time can take away from involvement in real social situations.

The trend tends to be that facebook users spend a lot of time on the site when their school first comes to the network but that the amount of time gradually slows down as the school adjusts to the new network.

Salve student Jessica Pezzone was one of the original studens involved with Salve’s application process for thefacebook.

“I had a meeting with the webmaster and director of communications shortly after the introduction of thefacebook and they were concerned with the content of some of the profiles,” she said in an interview conducted over the messaging system on thefacebook.

Her message to students reminds people “to be smart about their facebook pictures and profiles – anyone at Salve with a facebook account has access to your information, so try and keep inappropriate pictures out of your profile.”