Issue date: 10/18/04 Section: News

By BRANDI DUNN

Beginning Monday, Texas A&M students will be allowed to network with each other, with students from other schools in the Big 12 and with Ivy League students on www.campusnetwork.com.

"A lot of people from Columbia (University, in New York City) complained that there was no community. It's hard to meet people on your own campus," said Wayne Ting, co-founder of Campus Network. "So that's why we started this Web site. NYC has too many distractions. People said they had a hard time meeting people ... A big school could have that same problem."

Ting said Campus Network is the first online community specifically geared toward college students and allows students to share their pictures, online journal entries and profile information with people on the network. However, Campus Network is not the only Web site of its kind.

Thefacebook is another online directory that connects students through social networks at colleges and universities, but has more schools on its network than Campus Network.

"We want as many people as possible to be able to use thefacebook.com. Simple as that," said Chris Hughes, "Press Guy" for the student-run thefacebook.com. "We want students to have control over what information they would like to provide to their peers - screen names, favorite movies, classes and friends."

Other online networking sites, such as friendster.com and myspace.com, also aim to help people meet on the net through profiles, pictures and messaging, but are not specifically for college students.

"Myspace is worldwide. A lot of times you're not sure who you're meeting here. Billy Bob could be 55 with a picture of a 20-year-old football player," Ting said. "(With college-geared Web sites), there's a sense of security. Every e-mail is checked for the ".edu," (so) a stranger can't come to the site and use it to stalk people.

Ting also said that on sites like myspace.com and friendster.com, participants interact with people from different states, so the potential to actually meet someone is lower than college student Web sites.

Thefacebook allows individuals to search for other students from schools on the network based on hometowns, classes, interests and more.

Harrison Kalodimos, a freshman biomedical engineering major and thefacebook user, said he uses the site mostly to search for students from A&M.

"I met this other person who lives) in my hometown in Kansas, and now me and her are going to drive to Kansas in two weeks," Kalodimos said.

Ting said he doesn't know how many students will join Campus Network. Using its word-of-mouth advertising methods, Thefacebook already boasts 2, 491 A&M students registered on the site with a total of 473,688 registered users, according to Hughes.

Kalodimos said that while Web sites such as thefacebook.com are good for meeting people, he feels that sometimes students care more about how many people they know.

"You get the sense that people are trying to load up as many people as they can on their friends list," Kalodimos said.

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