What you need to know
- Facebook is launching a new service aimed at college students.
- Dubbed a 'college-only space,' Facebook Campus is designed to provide students with a section in the Facebook app dedicated to their college community.
- It's initially only available to students of a select few colleges in the U.S.
If you've ever seen The Social Network, you probably know that Mark Zuckerberg's social media behemoth began its life as 'Thefacebook' and was, at that time, was a college-only affair — and unsurprisingly exclusive to the Ivies. Well, the company says it's 'returning to its roots' with the launch of Facebook Campus, a section of the main Facebook app that's dedicated to all things college.
Students' Campus profiles will be different from the 'main' Facebook profile and can include things like their major, minor, classes, hometown, and graduation year. Additionally, signing up for the Campus service will require you to verify your college email — and, at present, to be a student of one of a select few colleges in the U.S. The list currently includes:
Benedict College; Brown University; California Institute of Technology; College of William & Mary; Duke University; Florida International University; Georgia Southern University; Georgia State University; Johns Hopkins University; Lane College; Lincoln University (Pennsylvania); Middlebury College; New Jersey Institute of Technology; Northwestern University; Rice University; Sarah Lawrence College; Scripps College; Smith College; Spelman College; Stephen F Austin State University; Tufts University; University at Albany – State University of New York; University of Hartford; University of Louisville; University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; Vassar College; Virginia Tech; Wellesley College; and Wesleyan University.
Facebook Campus will ship with three main features. The first is the Campus News Feed — again, this will be separate from your main Facebook feed — that includes updates from classmates, study groups, and more.
The second is a Campus directory, which lets you find other students at your college or university, with additional filters for things like classes, majors, year, and so on.
Last but not least: "Campus Chats are real-time chat rooms. Students can create chat rooms for their dorm, clubs or any other groups they're part of within Campus," says Facebook's Charmaine Hung, Product Manager for Facebook Campus.
With all of the scrutiny it's attracted in recent years, it is, of course, not surprising that the company has also penned another blog post detailing its privacy policy for Campus, which it says is designed to be 'safe, inclusive and optional.'
The idea behind Campus is to allow students affected by the pandemic and unable to meet their friends in person or go to their campuses to have an alternative means of maintaining those connections. Whether it'll be successful in tearing teens away from their TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, though, remains to be seen.
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