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THE UNDERGRADUATE Newfangled Networking

by nathan heller ’06

Some people live at the technological community within Harvard. The idea this moment, there are 14.) You soon learn vanguard. They operate their tie racks by seemed so clannish that I found it both not to raise too many eyebrows. remote control and read the barometric repugnant and fascinating: I wanted to But the ostensible purpose of Theface- pressure from their watches. Their know what went on inside without being book, like Friendster, is to build a “social stereos have a setting that can make the seen there myself. You cannot press your network,” which means making “friends.” sound of rushing water and toucans. nose against Thefacebook, though, with- In the site’s gestalt, friends are people Their cell phones-cum-cameras start vi- out leaving a mark on the window; the who do not hate you. When you propose brating at weird moments. site admits only those who have regis- friendship to someone via Thefacebook, I am not one of these people. I own a tered as users, sacrificing their own an e-mail announces the overture. When cell phone that looks as though it could anonymity to impose on others’. It makes they next log onto the site, they can ac- have been lifted from the belt of a security sense, in a spoilsport sort of way. And cept the friendship (in which case their guard and, inspired by its comme-il-faut after a few hours of tense vacillation, I de- photograph appears in a box at the bot- aesthetic, I put the display in French, a cided to take the plunge. tom of your profile) or they can reject it

language fully committed to being a fin- Thefacebook works like this: You de- (in which case you’re told that the re- ger in the eye of change. When many of velop a personal “profile” by answering quest is pending, endlessly). The whole my peers joined Friendster, an on-line so- the sorts of questions that might arise if process is no more taxing than finding a cial-networking tool, a couple of sum- Truman Capote had written the census. book in the public library. There are other mers ago, I threw my nose in the air. I’m You report your concentration at Harvard, bells and whistles, too, such as your abil- not the guy who peruses eBay, I assured phone number, hometown, and high ity to post comments on friends’ profiles, myself, and I’m not the guy who cares school; but you also list your favorite or to “poke” other users—in which case a about Friendster and such. books and interests outside class. You in- vaguely suggestive finger icon appears on Ah, but look at me now. Early last Feb- dicate whether you’re presently interested their home pages. ruary, in the torpor between the start of in men or women or both, and how. Some classes and the first wave of midterms, I people make you squirm with their soul- The site was launched by Mark Zucker- heard via e-mail about a website that one baring; others simply put their drivers’ li- berg ’06, a computer-science-and-psy- of my classmates had just launched. It censes on-line. Every field of your profile chology concentrator with whom I was called Thefacebook, and it appropri- is searchable, which means that you can shared a Straus Hall entryway my fresh- ated some of the social-networking con- instantly find everyone else at Harvard man year. At that point, he was best cepts of Friendster to create an on-line who cannot get enough of Catullus. (At known for smaller software creations and

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for his habit of crossing the Yard mid-af- remember, I will not care too much. futing the fatuous political claims of peo- ternoon in his pajamas. Since Theface- Yet Thefacebook’s epidemic growth ple you hardly know. book started accepting advertising late in raises a lot of questions, both at Harvard And behind the academic curtain, of the spring, it’s been an open secret that and among students elsewhere. Matched course, hides the impish Oz-pretender of he’s probably sitting on a gold mine. to a broader proliferation of social tech- college social life. You use your computer That’s because no one, including Zucker- nology in the College, it makes you won- to keep in touch amid conflicting sched- berg, anticipated how popular Theface- der whether undergraduates—and their ules and a blizzard of course work; to book would become. alumni counterparts—are still meeting make weekend plans; to pursue and even, The breadth of its success is almost each other the old-fashioned way at all. perhaps, to woo. In the wee hours of cer- alarming. When Zuckerberg’s Harvard Thefacebook may not change your life as tain Sunday mornings, someone you may site started brimming with several thou- much as, say, the Atkins Diet, but it’s al- or may not know sends you an e-mail sand members in late February, he opened ready defined a new pattern of social in- possibly inspired by late Joyce. parallel sites at Columbia, Stanford, and teraction for hundreds of thousands of It’s within this fabric of crosshatching Yale, and soon followed suit with the rest people at some of the country’s most elite e-mail threads that Thefacebook and a of the Ivy League. By the time I turned in colleges. Are Harvard students as so- slew of related websites have taken hold. my last final exam in May, Thefacebook cially di∞dent as the new technology ConnectU, a rival site, o≠ers similar net- encompassed about 200,000 users nation- makes them seem? Why is it appealing, working opportunities—albeit without wide. If everything goes according to rather than depressing, to know exactly Thefacebook’s popularity to date. Zuckerberg’s plans, the site will have how many “friends” you have? And what Hahvahdparties.com, also started by stu- reached about 250 colleges and half a mil- will this mean 10 years from now, when dents last year, provides a running calen- lion users by the time you read these these people are playing Chutes and Lad- dar of open social events and a selection words. At Harvard, it has become one of ders in the workforce? This could be the of jaunty “party” advice. Last winter saw those things—like making New Haven new face of the old-boy network—so the creation of Crimsonhookups.com, a jokes or falling asleep in chairs—that perhaps you should hire a consultant be- more-fabled-than-used on-line match- fore you log onto any making service. It enables students who more friendships. are really shy, lazy, pressed for time, or all of the above to arrange “hookups.” (And if Nineteenth-century you do not know what that means, you’re essayist Thomas De probably not supposed to.) This plethora Quincey might have been of on-line social venues may suggest that onto something perspica- students are interacting only on-line. cious when he remarked Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case at of his opium usage, “I all. Divya A. Mani ’05, a vice chair of the could not have done oth- Undergraduate Council’s College Life erwise.” I like to think the Committee, says she doesn’t view on-line same of my modest Inter- social venues, plentiful though they may net addiction. At Harvard be, as major contributors to the College’s today, the business of social milieu. “In terms of meeting and being a student is con- forging real relationships with people, ducted on-line. we’re still fairly traditional, despite the nearly everyone seems to do. The Univer- Many sections are arranged via web- runaway popularity of Thefacebook,” she sity’s version of the site now includes sites, and e-mail is the only way most stu- says. “My closest friends are those I met more than 11,000 members, not all of dents would dare to contact their teach- through housing assignments, common whom are students. An alumni enclave is ing fellows—or, for that matter, their social interests,…and extracurriculars.” scattered all over the country, and several professors—in a hurry. You use the Inter- Students generally approach their social faculty members have joined, too—some net to find books in Widener Library, to plans with the same verve and variety as rather conspicuous flies on the wall, re- download syllabi, and, as of this year, to they bring to everything else. “Without fusing to supply anything more than re- pay your termbills. You use e-mail to co- having conducted a scientific survey,” quired information, and others as enthusi- ordinate meetings for whatever extracur- Mani says, “I also feel like students have astic participants. I have been “poked” by ricular clubs you might have joined, or to very diverse ideas of what ‘social life’ con- people who sit on tenure committees. advertise the musical you’re producing. sists of”—and even so, she hasn’t encoun- At first blush, Thefacebook seems to be Thanks to your membership on half a tered a major enclave seeking a social out- a toy or a procrastination tool. It is both. dozen open e-mail lists—a concept that let through computers alone. I may become your “friend” tomorrow could only have originated with the same That’s good news to anyone west of morning but, very probably, neither of deity responsible for family reunions— MIT, but it doesn’t explain the “runaway us will remember by the evening. If I do you may spend your Friday evenings re- popularity” of Thefacebook and like sites.

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JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

The mechanism that allows something might be too new or too indirect to war- filiated with schools like Harvard be- like Thefacebook to be both popular and rant more direct overtures. College stu- cause, in many ways, it seems to put up peripheral lies, perhaps, less in the partic- dents, in other words, are using Theface- barriers of exclusivity. “I think there’s ular technology and more in the people book in the way that some people use something of a snob appeal in that re- who use it. dishwashing gloves: they’ve discovered gard,” he says. that the site can help them polish social Zuckerberg says he doesn’t like the idea As founder and chief developer of The- networks without getting their hands of an exclusivity attraction. He likes to , spends most messy. Getting caught up in anything is talk instead about a “tight connection” of his energy focusing on the website’s de- dangerous if you’re ambitious and very that the site aims to engender among its velopment, expanding its reach and coming up with new features. He keeps track of who is using the site and how. A strange thing hap- pened this past summer, he says, as the freshly admitted class of first-year students started look- ing ahead to the fall. “There are al- most as many incoming freshmen signed up for the site as any other class,” he explains. “And they were clearly using the site to meet people.” It was peculiar because The- facebook, despite its many thou- sands of members, hadn’t been used seriously to start friendships until busy. And if you’re a very busy college users. In the end, perhaps the distinction then. In the months when it first staked student, it’s probably because of obliga- is largely semantic: Thefacebook’s ten- out its users at Harvard and other col- tions pouring out of, well, your computer. dencies toward both inclusiveness and leges, the site was used only as a tool to Journalist Howard Rheingold, author exclusiveness seem irreconcilable because maintain—or, at best, to strengthen—ex- of The Virtual Community and several other they’re shadows cast by the same thing isting relationships. Mani says she’s no- books, has built his career by studying so- seen in di≠erent light. What’s producing ticed that the site “does little in terms of cial implications of technology. His the shadows is the site’s intense insular- people meeting entirely new people, and daughter, now in college, uses Theface- ity—and that may be the special some- more in terms of people superficially rein- book. Rheingold says sites like Zucker- thing accounting for Thefacebook’s unex- forcing the social connections they’ve al- berg’s are particularly appealing to cur- pected success. ready made through other sources.” Ac- rent undergraduates because they cater to When I log onto Thefacebook, I can cording to Zuckerberg, many users single people who have grown up sur- see all of my “friends” at Harvard. I have employ the site’s friendship invitations to rounded by on-line technology. He also friends at other schools, too—many from follow up on acquaintanceships that suggests that the site appeals to users af- high school, some rediscovered from ele-

The unforeseen success of the Harvard-founded website under Harvard’s honor code: the trio met with University presi- Thefacebook hasn’t gone unchecked. ConnectU, a rival on-line dent Lawrence H. Summers last spring to present their case. site targeting the same college users, leveled a lawsuit at The- Zuckerberg, who has taken this semester off from Harvard to facebook on September 2, alleging a stolen business idea. Con- continue developing his site from Palo Alto, maintains that his nectU’s founders, ’04, ’04, unpaid association with ConnectU was secured only by a non- and ’04, want Thefacebook shut down and its binding oral contract. He has denied allegations that Theface- profits handed over. book resulted from a stolen idea or purloined computer code, The conflict, according to Narendra and the Winklevoss twins, asserting that it differs from ConnectU on both counts. began last year at Harvard when Mark Zuckerberg ’06, who had Both the plaintiffs and defendants have secured legal repre- agreed to contribute computer programming to the nascent sentation from firms specializing in intellectual property law, ConnectU, left the project and launched Thefacebook on his racking up what could be six-digit legal bills as a result. But if the own. Their lawsuit casts a barrage of charges, from breach of lawsuit is studded with dollar signs, the rival sites are ultimately contract to fraud, against Zuckerberg, his site, and four other competing over users: as of this writing,Thefacebook’s member- employees of Thefacebook.The ConnectU founders sought legal ship is approaching 290,000 users, while ConnectU, launched action only after attempting unsuccessfully to indict Thefacebook three months after Thefacebook,has 15,000.

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mentary school—but they must be kept locating his or her name in a phonebook. start new friendships on-line from in a separate box on the edge of my profile It’s a lot more expedient—and a lot less scratch: such things are uncertain and page. I can browse information about messy—than asking mutual friends or dangerous on the stage—especially with anyone at Harvard, but at other schools I trying to wheedle information out of the so many other people watching. have access only to the profiles of people person him- or herself. Here, too, stu- I’ve already befriended. I cannot search dents seem to be using Thefacebook as a Maybe it’s shyness; maybe it’s shrewd- for students at more than one school at a bridge over the swampy minutiae of so- ness. It seems, in any case, to be what time. Access is configured, in other cial interaction, letting students spend happens when you raise a group of people words, so that I can never completely es- their time on “real relationships.” on e-mail and and send them o≠

cape a Harvard bubble. It’s hard to use The site also mitigates the hazards of to school. Where my socially e∞cient—if Thefacebook without tumbling headlong social life, for Thefacebook has no major slightly antiseptic—peers and I will end into a steep sort of gemeinschaft. perils. Conceivably, a kleptomaniac living up once we leave our universities is any- College users apparently like it that in Eliot House could discover where you body’s guess. Rheingold suggests that way. “Our approach has always been to live and steal all of your favorite books, Thefacebook’s social talons could loosen keep the spheres small,” Zuckerberg ex- but this seems less likely in a small, well- in a post-academic environment that isn’t plains. “It makes it so that it’s more of a monitored community than outside the charged with the intimacy of a college local community.” People feel safer as part University gates. Thefacebook isn’t the campus. The site o≠ers “a kind of a di- of a smaller group, he says, which makes sort of thing that can break your heart, ei- mension between strangers and friends,” them more inclined to post their personal ther. Friends there cannot betray you. It’s he says. “Being on campus is a unique sit- information. This echoes the compromise like a real social network, only more in- uation for meeting strangers. After gradu- that users make when they join the site: I nocuous. As a user, I can project my social ation, people have other ways of meeting expose myself in order to see others ex- world into a completely safe environ- strangers.” posed. Thefacebook legitimates this ment, playing with “friends” like chess Still, Zuckerberg says he hopes to hold shady-sounding arrangement because the pieces. That’s why it’s so much fun. onto the current crop of Facebook users site, to use Zuckerberg’s phrase, acts “as a Thefacebook and similar sites, in other as long as he can by keeping the site’s ca- mirror of the real-life social network.” I words, are performative venues: stages pabilities up to date. He recently added a can actually meet the people I’ve be- with ready-made audiences where users feature allowing users to log onto the site friended on-line. Some of them might can “perform” their lives, recasting them via their cell phones. Thefacebook hasn’t even live down the hall. in the process. Howard Rheingold specu- lost its grip on anyone so far. Divya Mani says Thefacebook “has rev- lates that this accounts for much of The- I have never tried the cell-phone thing, olutionized…on-line stalking.” Not the facebook’s appeal for a generation coming though. I’m convinced that my own sort of stalking that leads to restraining of age. “The performative aspect of every- phone would self-destruct in a cloud of orders, though; she means the sort of day life is magnified on-line,” he explains. silicon and cedillas under the weight of so “stalking” that college students pursue all “You can pretty much construct your much newfangledness. For the time the time. It’s essentially social research, whole persona.” Students at Harvard being, at least, I prefer to log on the old- and it’s how I and most people I know seem to be using safe, insular social tech- fashioned way. keep abreast of other people’s lives for en- nologies to help construct their identities tertainment, opportunity, and safety. at a point when such self-definition is the Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow Thefacebook makes finding out about order of the day. That might also explain Nathan Heller ’06 never pokes anyone without someone’s taste in music no harder than why most users have seemed loath to good reason.

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