To Life!

Amira Gaba

Jen Gonik

Brooke Weingarden

Daphna Heisler

FACE TO FACE from page 17

"We've been blown away by the
site's growth," Hughes said. "At the
outset, Mark was playing around with
an idea for Harvard students; but now,
it's a site with more than 3 million
users."
Facebook, which is free, makes a prof-
it through advertising and an announce-
ment option that costs about $15 a day.
Meanwhile, Facebook hopes to
expand to all 1,400 U.S. colleges by fall.
Is a corporate buyout in the future
for Facebook? "We've had offers, but
nothing too serious," Hughes said.
Still, it's not hard to guess why
Moskovitz and Zuckerberg left
Harvard for California's Silicon Valley
— the motherlode of venture capital
funding — to run Facebook as a 10-
person, privately held company.

Something In Common

While online college directories typical-
ly stick to sharing the very basics about
their students, sites like Facebook allow
users to decide how much — or how
little — information to reveal.
Each person who registers can
include a personal profile with infor-
mation about clubs and groups they're
involved in, favorite movies and music,
interests and relationship status. A dig-
ital photo also may be submitted.
In Facebook lingo, users can "friend"
someone else, meaning request place-
ment in an online clique of friends.
To send a one-to-one contact, they
can "poke" someone with an instant
message that appears on the user's
homepage or they can send a Facebook
message, similar to e-mail. Public mes-
sages can be left on a user's "wall."
All messages can be rejected if the
user chooses not to begin a connection
with someone who contacts them. In
addition, by adjusting a privacy set-
ting, only those within groups desig-
nated by the user can see their profile.
All that is needed to register is an e-
mail address from any one of the site's
participating schools. This ensures
access to the site only from those reg-
istered, and excludes all others, includ-

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ing parents.
Users can downsize their Facebook
world by becoming part of smaller
groups set up for specific interests.
"The groups on Facebook really help
link common interests among students,"
said 19-year-old Amira Gaba, a U-M
sophomore from West Bloomfield.
"I have a unique taste in music and it's
difficult to find others that enjoy the
same artists. After discovering certain
Facebook groups, however, I have come
to realize many any other students out
there have similar tastes."

Meeting Online

Participants may view the profiles of
other members they want to learn
more about; maybe someone they met
briefly, but don't have the courage to
talk to in person.
"In my sorority house last year, girls
would spend hours looking through
Facebook profiles," said Jen Gonik, 20, a
U-M junior from West Bloomfield. "I
had a friend in my house who had her
eye on this guy she met in one of her
classes, so she went on Facebook to see if
they had any mutual friends and to
`research' what his interests were from
his profile. I guess it worked because
they eventually ended up going out!"
Brooke Weingarden, 23, of West
Bloomfield has been contacted by
classmates who saw her on Facebook.
A second-year student at Nova
Southeastern University College of
Osteopathic Medicine Florida, she
said, "Many of the new student doc-
tors signed up on Facebook and have
been able to make friends, find study
partners and roommates."
One of the easiest ways to find other
Jewish students on a campus is to join or
create a Facebook group, like "The
Michigan Jew Crew" and the "American
Movement for Israel (AMI)," both of
which attracted Amira Gaba.
"Next year, I will be serving on the
board of U of M's AMI," she said.
"Facebook has become an important
means of communication for this
group. Not only can board members

send out mass e-mails through
Facebook, members of the group can
easily get in contact with the board of
AMI at any given time."

Where Have You Been?

Many Facebookers use the site to locate
friends from past lives.
By using various subsites within
Facebook, they can search by name and
by high school, including public, private
and Jewish parochial schools.
"I have looked up some old friends I
haven't seen or talked to in a little
while, and friends from years back
have contacted me as well," said Dani
Sherizen, 22, of Oak Park, who will
graduate from Yeshiva University in
New York next month.
For Maddy Zingle, 18, of West
Bloomfield, a simple search for old
friends brought a blast from the past
right up to the present. A girl Maddy
hung out with in playgroup at age 2 is
now a student at University of
Pennsylvania, where Maddy will be a
freshman this fall.
Weingarden has located old friends
from her days at Camp Ramah in
Canada, Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit and from United
Synagogue Youth. "These are friends
who now live all over the country and
in Canada," she said. "It is rather nos-
talgic to reunite with these people that
I used to be close with and merely lost
touch. Now, I am able to keep in con-
tact and catch up with everyone's lives."
Facebook also provides a way to stay
connected. "I probably would have lost
contact with a lot of acquaintances
from high school who went to different
colleges," Gonik said. "But now it's so
easy to stay in touch by sending a quick
message or seeing what they're up to in
college by checking their profiles."

Everyone's On

Joining Facebook has become conta-
gious among Gaba's classmates. "The
enthusiasm my friends had towards
Facebook made me decide to register

in October 2004," she said. "When
they saw I was clueless, they proceeded
to give me an essential college lecture
titled, `Facebook'."
Gonik said, "I wasn't even going to
join at first. But soon it got so popular
and I heard people on campus talking
about it, so I thought, 'Why not?'
Facebook is a great idea because it's
fun to see how people you know know
other people you know."
"It's interesting to see the role that
Facebook has taken on college and uni-
versity campuses," said Daphna Heisler,
21, of West Bloomfield, a senior at U-
M. "Lots of times, people meet each
other, see each other and Facebook
comes up in conversation. Are you on
Facebook?' 'Do you Facebook?' It seems
to have become its own language or
something reserved for students."
For Gonik, "The best part is defi-
nitely the birthday reminders. When
you log in, it tells you which of your
friends have birthdays within the next
couple of days. And it's nice because
on your birthday, you get tons of mes-
sages from people you haven't talked
to since elementary school wishing
you 'Happy Birthday.' Facebook is like
a college student's Rolodex."
Using the site as a source of sharing
milestone information like engagements
and births has been invaluable to
Weingarden. "On my wedding week-
end, many old friends sent messages via
this site to wish us a mazel tov," she said.
And for some Jewish kids, Facebook
has provided a special virtual connec-
tion. "An observant friend of mine
entering college this year told me that,
after joining Facebook, several mem-
bers of the university's religious com-
munity got in contact with her," Gaba
said. "They noticed her religious inter-
ests and wanted to welcome her to the
community.
"Facebook truly makes the world a
much smaller place."

Molly Lipsitz of the Atlanta Jewish
Times, the sister publication of the JN,
contributed to this report.

