For years, University students have thumbed through their facebooks in search of familiar names and faces.
This year, however, the same information — and more — can be accessed with the simple click of a mouse through the new University online facebook.
"It's just a great idea to bring the community together," said Clare Hunt '05, manager of the Princeton Facebook Agency.
The new cyber facebook, adding to the basic photo and biographical information found in the paper version, allows students to compile lists of friends, keep track of their meal exchanges, and send e-cards to friends and family.
Students can also create profiles, write in a journal, and check personalized calendars that can remind them of friends' birthdays and events held by campus groups with which they are involved.
The online facebook is also an asset to campus groups, providing pages with message boards and calendars.
In addition to offering these tools, the online facebook functions as "the most powerful search engine on campus," Hunt said. Students who are signed up can search the database by first or last name, residence, or eating club.
The online facebook has been a long time in the making. Even before the first University student had heard of the wildly popular Thefacebook.com, the Princeton Student Agencies — a branch of the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students that oversees the facebook agency — was brainstorming ways to put the University facebook onto the Internet.
"The idea to have an online facebook started a few years ago," Director of Princeton Student Agencies Sean Weaver said in an email.
"Although few Ivy League schools had a true online facebook, we . . . knew we needed to keep up with technology," he said.
Weaver said they had only decided to go ahead with the online facebook after spending about a year surveying other similar technologies.
"With its many features, we see it as a very useful tool for students," Weaver said. "We also know the online facebook has great flexibility and potential and will easily grow and expand with the needs of the students."
Hunt, too, expects growth. Although one-fifth of the University's students are already registered, she said she expects the online facebook's popularity to grow over the years.
"It's all very exciting," she said.
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