Through numerous posts both quantitative and anecdotal, it seems to me that Doug and I have established, at minimum, that TheFaceBook is a popular website. Time marches on -- the class of 2009, only some of whom have actually moved to college yet, have already flocked to TheFaceBook in droves. Here at Penn, where classes won't begin until September 7, TheFaceBook reports more than 500 users from the class of 2009.
Now, here's an interesting quote from SiliconBeat about TheFaceBook's limited scope:
Facebook's 21-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg has a notable philosophy. He says part of the reason students have opened up so much to each other at Facebook is because of limits drawn. Students at other schools who are not your friends can't see your full profile. "Sometimes, by drawing boundaries, you increase the utility of this kind of site," he told us. "You can't give people as much power as they want."
Doug and I have written quite a bit in recent weeks about social networks' tendencies towards balkanization. I agree with Mark that under certain circumstances networks can uncover a great deal of power by limiting their scope. In TheFaceBook's case, one key benefit may the anxious buzz created amongst late high schoolers who don't yet qualify. Another may be an elevated level of trust that leads users to post deep, rich information about themselves.
From my (admittedly) privleged, Ivy-League echo-chamber of a perspective, however, it seems that even TheFaceBook is only scope-limited to a point. By this point, Mark and his team have used their venture capital funding to extend support to every four-year college or university in the country, and many two-year ones as well.
Today, the overall market seems to be the space of .edu domain names. Those are supposedly restricted to accredited universities, although there are notable exceptions. A representative from Educause, the registrar of .edu sites, told me that today there are about 7,600 domains registered under the .edu gTLD. An index posted by the University of Texas at Austin lists 1,948 distinct US Universities. Of the students and faculty who fall under these considerable auspices, 3.68 million have thus far created profiles on TheFaceBook. So there seems to be plenty of room for growth.
SiliconBeat and Jupiter Research have posted teasing hits to 'stay tuned' for future TheFaceBook developments coming in the next few days. My money's on expanded features for professional users that allow today's college upper-classmen to continue using the site once we get out there into the real world. I've heard rumors that beta-features along those lines popped up early in the summer and besides, it seems to me that TheFaceBook isn't really a group to shy away from a smartly-expanded target market. Just watch.
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