Duke students who while away their time on Thefacebook.com can now procrastinate at another distracting website, as a group of Columbia University students brought a competing online community to Duke Monday.
Duke students who while away their time on Thefacebook.com can now procrastinate at another distracting website, as a group of Columbia University students brought a competing online community to Duke Monday. CampusNetwork.com, the new site, aims to imitate and expand upon the popular Harvard-based site that arrived at Duke last spring and now includes more than 100 colleges and universities.
CampusNetwork.com began more than a year ago at Columbia and has only expanded to other schools in the last month. Ivy League schools were the first to join Columbia on CampusNetwork.com; Duke, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were added in the second round three weeks later.
“Once you create the site, it’s only about allowing more schools to join,” said Columbia senior Wayne Ting, a spokesperson for CampusNetwork.com. “I think there’s a perception that more is better—more and better schools, more and better users.... We are trying to make sure we don’t lose the sense of community as we expand.”
The new site has many of the same features as Thefacebook.com, including basic biographical data and contact information. CampusNetwork.com’s designers, however, have expanded their brainchild to include photo albums and web logs as options for its users. Ting also said the site contains professor reviews and 10 online radio stations exclusive to CampusNetwork.com.
“Our focus is on interactivity; we wanted to create a more substantive and complete site,” Ting said.
Ting said the group has no plans to advertise its site on any campuses, but rather plans to “let it grow organically.”
“We hope that if users like it, they’ll tell their friends,” he said.
With only one day on the market, CampusNetwork has already accrued 19 Duke members, many of whom heard about the site through friends at other schools.
“Someone sent it to me because it’s a good way to meet people for business and to keep in touch with friends,” senior Tushar Kirtane said. “I did it mainly as a time-killer.”
The phenomenon has already caught on at Ivy League schools, but it still lags behind its Cambridge counterpart.
“I don’t know if it’s that popular,” said Yale University junior Kara Gaughen, who joined a week ago. “Thefacebook is definitely more prevalent.”
Ting is nevertheless optimistic about his venture, which he hopes will adapt well to “big state schools with more of a sports focus.”
“So far the response has been very, very positive,” he said.
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