Three months after thefacebook.com was launched and some 60-odd days after it came to Dartmouth, the multi-school online photo directory has continued to rapidly expand -- reaping both social and entrepreneurial benefits. The long-commercial-free site, users have remarked, now posts numerous advertisements.
The site's creators did not anticipate a enthusiastic and widespread response, but are pleased with the site's expansion, according to Harvard sophomore Chris Hughes, who helped launch the online friend-tracking database. Hughes said the site gets over 10 requests a day to open at schools that are not already connected, and he projected that it would eventually encompass more than 100 schools.
The original strategy for adding schools focused on places where many students who were already facebook members had friends. Hughes explained that after opening at Harvard, the original facebook school, Yale was a logical choice as a school where many Harvard students had friends. Boston schools were next, and the site is currently expanding to schools in the Midwest.
The site itself is continually changing as well. Recent additions include a function that allows members to post their significant others and their summer plans. More programs are on the way, including "new programs to be integrated into the site in the fall," Hughes said.
Hughes declined to elaborate on pending changes, but commented that "the change that will happen will give the site new flavor and will keep people coming back to the site, even at places that we opened up at months ago."
But all this expansion and updating requires manpower and server space, and as a result, thefacebook.com is permitting small-scale advertising on a school-by-school basis. The site does not solicit ads, but according to Hughes, some sort of funding is needed to pay personal costs and for server space. The site is also hiring a few additional people to help defray the time spent maintaining the site.
Thus far, advertising has mainly been local and small-scale, though the site is exploring funding from larger national groups, as they are a more reliable source of funds and are able to pay more than what student groups can afford.
But Hughes emphasized that thefacebook.com has never been considered a commercial venture. Rather, the site is primarily about "the recreational aspect of building an identity online," said Hughes.
"It's a resource tool for information," said Hughes, "there are a wide array of options on the site and a lot of useful things can be done with the information entered."
The directory aspect of thefacebook is one of the site's main draws and a reason for its inception at Harvard. According to Hughes, students were frustrated by the lack of an online directory at the university. Thefacebook was created to fill that gap. At Dartmouth, similar requests for an online directory have abounded, resulting in the Student Assembly's Student Services Committee's project to create an online version of the campus directory "Mugshots," intended to replace the printed version.
According to Diana Zhang '06, the committee's chair and a friend of thefacebook.com's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, an online "Mugshots" is in the works for Dartmouth.
Unlike thefacebook.com, this online directory will be limited to the Dartmouth community, as it will be an official school directory. There will be no phony names and no phony pictures.
