Oracle Online

There are still some bugs in the site č for instance, the number of users displayed is much lower than the number registered with the site, and the list of provided majors doesn’t match with Hamline’s curriculum. But that didn’t stop students during the first week, who signed up at a rate of 70 per day.

Though new interest appears to have tapered off, for many students already on the site, such as first-year Alan Post, logging on to Hamlinefacebook.com is a now common pastime.

“I’m on the site whenever I’m not doing my homework,” Post said, or about five times a day, he figured. He lives on campus in Peterson, and said everyone he knows is using the website.

Post mostly browses user profiles, checks on names next to familiar faces, and finds online screen names of classmates he knows. He’s a passive user, though. He said he wouldn’t ever use the site to message or call people he didn’t know. He has his cell phone number listed in his profile, but he said he wouldn’t appreciate a stranger from the site calling.

“I would be weirded out. [That’s] kind of creepy,” he said.

Sophomore Natalie Netzel shares similar views. She said she doesn’t plan on “stretching the boundaries” by messaging other people, and she only added personal information that “could be found in the Hamline directory.” She enjoys using the site, however.

“It’s fun, mindless entertainment,” she said. “There’s no real purpose to it, but it’s something to do when you’re fiddling around on your computer.”

But, she added, “It seems like a big popularity contest. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of point to it.”
Features of the site include allowing users to search for people based on as many or as few qualities they’re looking for, including relationship status, interests, and political views.

A quick search revealed:

About 20 percent of users list their dating status as single č good news for those who hope to use the site as a vehicle for future romance.

Self-proclaimed liberals number 176, while only 24 described themselves as conservative. Bad news for the conservative singles, of whom there are eight č and all males.

Ninety-seven people are interested in music, six in drinking, and none in math.

The “network” function lets users see how many degrees they’re separated from another user, based on
the friend groups they share. It isn’t as useful as it would be with a larger university; with 1,800 undergrads and over a third already registered on the website, nearly everyone’s connected with everyone else in four degrees or less.

A user’s friends are listed at the bottom of each profile. Some have only a few, most have a dozen or so, and a few have more than 50.

“I don’t know if it’s a competition,” said junior Andrew Cole, who has 57 friends defined. “But if it is, I’m doing pretty well for myself.”

Virtual yearbooks

The idea of online facebooks is relatively new; early 2004 saw the launch of Thefacebook.com, the brainchild of five Harvard students. The site has received plenty of media attention over the last few months, and now boasts 1.5 million registered users.

It’s similar to Collegefacebook.com and to a third site, ConnectU.com, and the new facebook craze has found some toeing cyber-territory lines. ConnectU.com sued Thefacebook.com in September for allegedly stealing their concept and putting it online first, and now Chris Hughes, co-founder of Thefacebook.com, isn’t happy with Collegefacebook.com.

“It is one in a string of small copy-cat sites that attempt to mimic our appearance and functionality,” he said in an e-mail last week.

Thefacebook.com has a few features absent from Hamlinefacebook.com. Hamline users can’t set up groups (online communities based on interests or mission statements), and they can’t connect with a network of other colleges. On Thefacebook.com, users can search profiles of students from every other college on the network; useful, for instance, in finding out how those old chums from high school are doing.

Hamline isn’t on the Thefacebook.com network, Hughes said, because they haven’t yet received enough requests for it.

Safety concerns

Users can include personal information on their site profile. Some, like Netzel, have only added basic information such as dorm phone and e-mail address. Others have chosen to display their cell phone numbers and home addresses, a practice that raised concern among administration.

Chief Information Officer Harry Pontiff sent out an all-campus e-mail last week recommending that students use Hamlinefacebook.com with substantial caution, because of susceptibility to identity threat and the possibility of harassment.

“It’s a case of buyer beware,” he said. “Students need to recognize that whenever they put out personal info, it can be used for good or bad.”

What he’s most worried about, he said, is that since Hamlinefacebook.com isn’t associated with the university, he and the Information Technology department can’t monitor the site. If a situation arose č identity theft, for instance č the university wouldn’t be involved.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “We have no capacity to intervene, to protect, to anything. There’s nobody here that will pick up the pieces if something goes wrong.”

Associate Dean of Students Alan Sickbert also expressed concerns over the site’s security. It looks like it’s university-affiliated, he said, which may make some students more willing to give out information.

“I do worry about how much information people might give,” he said, adding that he’s worried about potential for “predators.”

“Not all people could be online for good will, and there are some people who may falsify [information].”

Hamlinefacebook.com says on its sign-up screen that it blocks from registration anyone without a school e-mail address. However, it’s possible to register any e-mail address č as long as the user has access to that account. The Oracle was able to set up free accounts with both Yahoo! and Google Mail and register them with Hamlinefacebook.com.

With sites such as Thefacebook.com, e-mail addresses not associated with a specific school are not allowed and registration is blocked.

Pontiff isn’t overly concerned about the site, however.

“It looks legitimate and well-constructed,” he said. “I’m just trying to educate the student body to the vulnerabilities that always exist when [they] put personal information on the Internet.”╩