Taking MySpace: Facebook Launches At High Schools Nationwide

Facebook has rolled out support for high schools. My initial reaction was this: wow, it's brilliant. Not only do they avoid being undercut by any potential competitor that might try to swipe their user base by doing a facebook for high schools and effectively transitioning those high schools students into a college facebook of their own, but they are going in strong for a business currently owned by classmates.com and they find a new way to grab millions for users. But the real reason behind doing it? I asked my friend Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and he said that, simply, "It's also just cool." Very true, it is very cool facebook is entering that market, especially for the many high school students curious about it from hearing about it from college friends. At this point, the flow of new features from Facebook is driven by that idea: what would be fun for the user. High school seniors already clammer for their .edu addresses so they can log in to facebook; this gives students an additional four years to link up their high school friends before venturing off to college. Mark tells me the idea to launch at high schools came about a month ago.

Bottom line is this is absolutely huge news. Facebook was already on track to double its traffic with expanding to the rest of colleges, and thus equal MySpace's traffic, but high schools means the potential to more than double that traffic. If it takes to high schools like facebook for colleges, watch out. Smartly, facebook does not permit high school users to even contact college users, and vice versa; no reason to risk making the golden goose sick. Screenshots are below.

The next step? I am trying to convince them to do (dare I link to my article again? I think yes...) corporate facebooks. I suppose the logical next step before that would be tending to alums. Universities have tried in vain for years, and in the process invested millions of dollars, trying to maintain a vibrant, up-to-date and useful alumni network in order to provide some value to . That is effectively what, year in and year out, facebook will closer come to approximate. Every year, a new class with 95% of the students signed up will leave the hallowed halls of their respective universities and find jobs, lovers and pay taxes. Facebook has that locked up already; the key is making the network work for them as alums. So take all the supposed uses of traditional alumni networks at schools now, and imagine them plugged into facebook: find someone who works in a certain position at an auto company; find someone who is a trial lawyer specializing in real estate litigation; find someone who moved to Alaska; find someone who has once worked for Goldman Sachs and thus may be able to provide insight into the life as an Associate investment banker; and on, and on. The difference between the facebook alumni network and the traditional alumni networks is that the facebook one has the potential to be orders of magnitude more useful: take Wharton's alumni network "WAVE" for example. Sure, it has everyone listed, but I visited with technician responsible for maintaining and updating alumni data, and I was told it is riddled with out of date information. Why? Alums move on, lose touch with their alma mater, and choose not to fill out some form they get in the mail that they in all likelihood confuse as a solicitation for donations to their respective endowments. Instead, facebook has everyone right out of the gate. That is a business in and of itself: permitting universities to use the facebook network to solicit donations from alums. And thus is the irony: some universities resisted or delayed making their own online facebook with editable fields out of fear that students would abuse the system by posting inappropriate or untrue information. Those concerns made way for the real facebook, and it will come full circle when those very same universities have no more cost efficient way than to advertise on facebook to get donations from their alums! :) I wonder how many chancellors have pondered that one.