Utah State joins Facebook.com

When senior Lindsay Thomson signed onto www.facebook.com, she was among the first Utah State University students to join the on-line community.

But with more than 4.2 million users nationwide, she’s not alone on the “social-networking Web site.”

With the drag of a mouse and a click of a button, Thomson is able to search for other students at USU or across the nation.

“It’s a really easy way to keep in touch with people,” Thomson, a public relations major from New Jersey said. “I got back in touch with a lot of people from high school.”

Facebook Spokesperson Chris Hughes said the original intent of the site was to revamp the orginal college facebooks – “books of bad Freshman-year ID photos and boring information” – by putting the information online, and giving control to the users.

The site allows its users to create a profile, which consists of a photograph and some personal information.

Users can post class schedules, addresses, party announcements and relationship status, which even includes an option for people interested in “random play.”

Created by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in the winter of 2004, the site was originally intended for Zuckerberg’s Harvard classmates. But after more than 6,000 students signed up for the site within the first few weeks “it seemed ridiculous not to open it up to a few other schools,” Hughes said.

Now the Internet community is available to students at all 4-year universities in the United States, and requires a .edu e-mail address to log on – a requirement that Hughes said sets the Facebook apart from other online communities such as Friendster and Myspace.

“Facebook is similar to those sites only because it’s a site with social-networking capabilities,” he said. “Unlike them, Facebook is grounded in specific, real college communities.”

Thomson, who is also one of more than 21 million MySpace.com users, said her interest in the now-Fox-owned Web site has declined lately, and said she finds herself signing onto Facebook at a “more-than-daily basis.”

“Myspace is more of a meeting people you don’t know sort of thing,” Thomson said. “On Facebook, you have to be more of yourself and not a stupid scenester kid.”

Of Facebook’s more than 4.2 million users, Hughes said about 60 percent log in each day and the site gets more than 100 million hits ever 24 hours.

Hughes also said about 16,000 new users sign up for the Web site daily.

-acf@cc.usu.edu