Students to connect through web facebook

For students who make a hobby of poring over the University facebook, it is time to move on to bigger and better things.

Princeton students will be able to sign up on www.thefacebook.com, a site featuring a database of student profiles from a growing list of schools, beginning Sunday, said Chris Hughes, a sophomore at Harvard and the site's press manager.

"It's an online community and social networking site for college students and alums," Hughes said.

Students at Princeton will now be able create a profile for themselves, including their pictures, courses in which they're enrolled and other random facts. However, students are under no obligation to participate.

Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg, Hughes' roommate, started the site with other friends at his school. Harvard students were able to register on the site beginning last January. Because the site experienced such popularity, its creators decided to expand to other schools.

"The infrastructure was there," Hughes said. "Schools have pestered us with requests. Every school we've gone to has ballooned."

He said the deciding factor for including a certain school was, "whether kids were already in network with or knew kids at the other school."

Currently the facebook includes Harvard, Columbia University, Stanford University, Yale University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and New York University. Brown University will also be added Sunday.

"We didn't want the site to seem like it was for Ivy Leaguers exclusively," Hughes said, while adding that it is probable that a student at an Ivy League school has many connections with fellow Ivy Leaguers.

The facebook itself is not affiliated with any university.

More than 8,000 students have joined at Harvard, bringing the current total from all schools to 30,555.

Hughes said a great part of thefacebook is fun: the ability to scrutinize the picture a friend decided to include, the favorite book and the quote. There are even links to news articles in the student's school paper where he or she is mentioned.

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The site lists some of its capabilities as, "Look up your friend's friends" and, "See a visualization of your social network."

The site also has utilitarian aspects. Since users list the courses they are taking, students can use the site to organize study groups.

Upon registering, students can choose from elaborate privacy settings that control the distribution of contact information. Such information can be made available only to one's school or even only to one's class.

"We haven't needed to do much proactive advertising," Hughes said, explaining that news of the site is spread by inviting friends and by word of mouth.