Facebook

Despite the worldwide popularity of social networking websites, eating clubs have found little use for the services provided by sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Social networking sites are useful, but their business model is to sell detailed information about their users. As a result, our personal data spreads far and wide, our privacy is eroded and our risks increase.

Think about the last time you ran into a member of a prestigious campus group or exclusive eating club. Were you not nicer, warmer and faker to him or her than you would have been to someone who had no such affiliations? How often do you spend precious Princetonian minutes reaching out to someone new, truly without ulterior motives?

In a time when it’s infinitely valuable to have the ability to mold your ideology without being labeled a flip-flopper, it’s best never to have mentioned Proposition 19. Likewise, it’s better never to have joined the “One Million Strong for Barack Obama” group on Facebook. But it goes beyond this: It’s better never to have mentioned your feelings about any subject at all.

It’s a familiar feeling at Princeton: Students take photos at events, only to regret them when they appear on Facebook, open to the eyes of employers. But Josh Weinstein ’09 — the former USG president turned entrepreneur — said he has a solution.

Last month, Weinstein launched CollegeOnly.com, the latest in a line of social networking websites he has created exclusively for college students that combines many features of his previous projects.