Student's start-up draws attention and $13 million

Online interactive college-student network is part of a new generation of Web start-ups quietly attracting investment capital.
The New York Times

The story "Student's start-up draws attention and $13 million" published May 25, 2005 at 10:00 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[drhamad]

As the article says - FB is interesting at first - AT FIRST

I've been a big fan of thefacebook for a while, but as the student quoted in the article says, it's interesting at first... and what she doesn't go on to say, but is on every FB users mind, is that it is just at first. Few people remain interested in it once they find their friends, and few people use it to talk with their friends. The groups are practically unused, even if a ton of people are signed up for them. I built up my list of friends, but now I barely go back - and that's still saying more for my use of it than for most. I see more activity in MySpace's brand new college sections than I do in facebook, even though I like FB a lot more.

Facebook or MySpace

I think MySpace is much better than facebook. For one thing, a lot more people use MySpace, because you don't have to be in college or have a .edu email address. Most of my friends and I use that instead of Facebook, even though most of us are members of facebook. You guys should do a story on MySpace also.

[dmehus]

True enough

Hi Zack:<br /><br />Yeah, I definitely agree with you that by requiring a ".edu" e-mail address to register with Thefacebook.com, they are severely handicapping themselves. It's akin to cutting off their right leg. Consider, there are many community colleges or technical schools in the U.S. which may or may not be even eligible to apply for a ".edu" domain name from Educause, the U.S. government-contracted registry operator and sole registrar of ".edu" domain names. The registration guidelines for ".edu" names, though relaxed since partial deregulation several years ago, are still quite stringent and your institution has to meet certain guidelines and certifications from the federal U.S. Department of Education. Moreover, international universities, colleges, trade schools, etc. may not get ".edu" names as you have to be U.S. based. That really limits their potential for growth.<br /><br />As well, high schools are not eligible for ".edu" domain names - preventing many seniors in high school from getting an early "jump" into Thefacebook.com when scouting around for potential campuses to attend and learning about each school from respective alumni.<br /><br />As for MySpace, given that it is majority-owned by adware purveyor, Web portal operator, and weight loss cream marketer Intermix Media Inc. (with minority stakes from Redpoint Ventures Inc. and MySpace Inc. management), it has actually received quite a bit of media attention of late. A quick search for "MySpace" on Google News turns up more results than Monster Worldwide's Tickle, the largest social networking site, Friendster, Yahoo! 360, and a whole myriad of so-called social-networking Web sites. I think MySpace's business model is more fiscally sound and better in the long-term than Thefacebook.com; however, I strongly dislike MySpace's back-end infrastructure (read: Microsoft IIS Web servers) and coding-environment (read: Microsoft Active Server Pages with *.asp and *.cfm extensions). They would be well served to switch to PHP and open up the blogs portion to the unregistered user who just wants to read and sample Web logs, with full RSS or Atom syndication capabilities, better permalinks, and titles on permalinked post pages.<br /><br />Just getting some stuff off of my chest,<br />Doug M.<br />dmehus AT gmail DOT com

TheCollegeWeb is better!!

It just that nobody knows about them because they are only at Indiana, Florida State and Ohio State<br /><br />www.TheHoosierWeb.com<br />www.noleweb.com<br />www.osuweb.com<br /><br />I am hooked on thehoosierweb!

Why Limit it to Colleges? Spread the Love Man!

C'mon. You have a nation of almost 300 million and you are only going to let people with a valid .edu address join. What kind of a crippled business plan is that?<br /><br />Personally, I love the Mojo websites. They are built by locals for locals and they are just plain cool. They don't carry a G Rating like MySpace.com though - which I think is a plus.<br /><br />TampaMojo.com<br />LouisvilleMojo.com<br />NashvilleMojo.com<br />AtlantaMojo.com<br />CincinnattiMojo.com<br />StLouisMojo.com<br />LexingtonMojo.com<br /><br />Well, there's more - but you get the point! Spread the love - Yeah Baby! Are you local?