Drawing on success, thefacebook.com empire expands into other arenas

Wirehog

When DC++ was shut down in December, Princeton students lost one of the most widely used file-sharing programs on campus. Wirehog, a new file-sharing application introduced by the creators of thefacebook.com, may soon take its place.

Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Adam D'Angelo and Dustin Moskovitz came up with the idea in the fall of 2003 and started developing the program this past summer.

Wirehog was released for preliminary use at Ivy League institutions and a few other universities, including Stanford and NYU, earlier this year.

Integrated with thefacebook.com, the program can be used to share any desktop files with a select group of people drawn from a user's list of friends on the website.

Once the program has been downloaded, users can choose which files to share and who may access them. Wirehog then compiles these files onto a separate web page.

"[The] main reason we came up with Wirehog is that when you're only sharing files with your friends, then it opens up a lot of possibilities that you don't have with anonymous file-sharing programs," McCollum said.

Jackson Murley '06 recently downloaded the program and said that he uses it primarily to share pictures with his friends.

"I think it's great," he said. "On your [facebook.com] home profile page, you can see random pictures. And you can check out your friends' pictures."

Wirehog also allows users to organize and view thumbnail pictures.

"I have a Mac so I haven't been able use some of the other file-transfer programs," Murley said. "So I appreciate the Mac compatibility."

Though DC++ was shut down because the University feared students used the server for "illicit purposes," the creators of Wirehog said that this should not be an issue with their program.

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"When people share only with their friends, they post pictures of the party they were at last night or music they made themselves. If you made it, then you can share it," said McCollum, though he admitted that it is "technically possible" for people to share material protected by copyright laws.

Wirehog has already received an enthusiastic response from students around the country in the brief time since its debut.

"People really like it and the people who use it are quite psyched about it and think that it has potential," McCollum said.

"The name for the program came because we wanted it to become so popular that students would use it all the time over their campus networks and so we'd be 'hogging the wires,'" he said. "Also, pigs are cute."

Beirut tournment

The thefacebook.com, an online directory for college students, and beirut, a drinking game, rank among the most popular time-wasting activities on college campuses. So when thefacebook.com announced a nationwide beirut tournament, many students expressed enthusiasm for the ultimate combination of their recreational interests.

Though the three-day tournament was to be held this February in New York, the event was cancelled earlier this month. The cancellation followed objections from thefacebook.com's sponsors and university administrators.

"We got a lot of pressure from a lot of different organizations that thought we were promoting underage drinking, binge drinking or creating general mayhem," said Mark Zuckerberg, creator of thefacebook.com.

In addition to concerns that a beirut tournament promoted irresponsible drinking habits, some organizations feared the consequences of being publicly associated with the tournament.

"A bunch of the advertisers have really strict policies that they're not allowed to advertise on sites that advertise alcohol at all," he said. "Some schools started blocking us. This was obviously really bad for the facebook."

The general disapproval became obvious when Stanford University cancelled a speaking engagement by Zuckerberg on their campus.

"It wasn't worth the trouble in the end," Zuckerberg said. "We didn't want anyone getting us into trouble for something that was supposed to be fun."

After receiving a cancellation email from the organizers, most students were left bewildered by the sudden change in plans.

Zuckerberg said that the general reaction among students towards the cancellation of the tournament was "confused and sympathetic."

"When I first heard about [the beirut tournament], I kind of suspected that a lot of bad publicity would come out as a result of the thing," Rehan Shamim '05 said.

Thefacebook.com did attempt to circumvent potential legal issues in their official rules – underage students and those enrolled in colleges where alcohol is not allowed on campus would play with 2% milk and were not eligible for the final tournament, in which beer would be used.

"I think the tournament could have gone on as planned without any underage drinking problems," Shamim said.

All those registered for the tournament were refunded their $10 registration fee. The money was originally to be awarded to the winner from each school in order to help with their traveling expenses to the finals in New York.