For students worried about snooping parents or potential bosses with penchants for Facebook stalking, a new social networking site available only to college students, CollegeOnly, may provide a solution, according to its founder, Josh Weinsten. The site promises an online environment devoid of parents, employers and "other folks that shouldn't see what you are up to on a Saturday night," he said.
With its membership limited to users with college e-mail addresses, CollegeOnly imitates the original Facebook site before it became accessible to users of all ages, Weinstein said.
"There's a lot we can learn from Facebook, especially Facebook 1.0," Weinstein, a 2009 Princeton University graduate, said. "I feel like a lot of people have said we're Facebook classic, or the purest version of Facebook."
CollegeOnly will premiere at New York University and Columbia University on Oct. 2, and at Dartmouth in "a month or two," Weinstein said.
Students at Cornell University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton currently have access to CollegeOnly and serve as sources of feedback for the site, according to Weinstein.
"Everyone in these schools is a part of this focus group that we're running," he said. "The feedback has been really positive."
During the first month of its operation, CollegeOnly has attracted a few thousand users from the schools to which the site is open, Weinstein said, adding that there remains an untapped market of over 10,000 students at schools that cannot yet access the site.
Some Dartmouth students interviewed by The Dartmouth said they found CollegeOnly's offer of privacy appealing.
"Parents I don't care about, but if I was guaranteed to know that no employers were on there, it would make a big difference," Max Gelb '11 said. "Facebook has become very commercial."
Other Dartmouth students, however, thought Facebook's privacy settings could offer the same exclusivity as CollegeOnly.
"I guess it's nice that your mom can't see your statuses, or what you did last night," Marion Ruan '13 said. "But I just don't see the point. There's already one website that does everything that [CollegeOnly] does. If you know how to work the privacy settings, then there's no point to having a whole other website."
To gauge where to introduce CollegeOnly, Weinstein said he takes into account geographic proximity to the site's headquarters in New York City and interest expressed by students.
"A lot of the social dynamics at Princeton are similar to the social dynamics at Yale," he said. "The excessive amount of work, lack of sleep, et cetera it makes sense that the service would be similarly popular at a schools that are very similar."
To spread word about the site, CollegeOnly representatives hosted a tailgating event at Yale, and will hold an event for its current and potential users in New York City on Oct. 2, according to Weinstein.
Before CollegeOnly, Weinstein created GoodCrush, a "college only social network with a dating twist," followed by RandomDorm, a site where college students can video chat, according to the CollegeOnly site.
"We proved there were opportunities to offer special networks social websites to college students in a way that wasn't offered by other sites," Weinstein said. "Then, over time, we realized a much better model would be just one website with a bunch of different features."
Aside from offering an exclusively collegiate network, CollegeOnly includes features such as a campus news feed, multiple profile pictures, chat rooms and video chats.
"People in your fraternities and sororities, you can have a group chat with them throughout the day," Weinstein said. "People are pretty pumped about that."
An anonymous posting option where users can share overheard conversations is also available.
To prevent students from using anonymity to post cruel comments reminiscent of those displayed on JuicyCampus and Bored@Baker two gossip sites the CollegeOnly staff will moderate discussion, according to Weinstein.
"Anonymity with Juicy Campus was a weapon that people used against each other, whereas here it's a way of approaching a subject in a very controlled manner," he said. "I definitely learned a lot of lessons from Juicy Campus."
A feature called "Missed Connections" enables users to "connect romantically" to other students without necessarily revealing their identities, according to Weinstein.
"The routes a lot of people are taking are going to a party and hoping to hook up with someone," he said. "This is a more traditional way to meet someone and make a connection."
But the presence of another social networking site may increase the risk of procrastination, according to some students.
"I don't want another website to maintain and keep track of," Megan Jang 13 said. "It will just be another website to distract me from my homework and make me procrastinate."
