“My site is better in the sense that it’s more interesting to students. Harvard as an institution can’t touch the social networking stuff,” he said. “But we have roughly 55 percent of the student population, whereas Harvard will have 100 percent. [Thefacebook.com] is not as definitive as their website will be.”
Chadbourne said that he thought that thefacebook.com might not have longevity of an institutional facebook.
“I’m a bit curious to see if Mark’s website is a short-term phenomenon,” he said. “Last year there was a thing called buddyzoo.com where you could post your buddy list online and create a network, but after a while people definitely lost interest in it.”
But for now, thefacebook.com has taken Harvard by storm—according to Fink, perhaps to an unhealthy degree.
“People come up to me in Annenberg and are like, ‘Hey, I’m your friend,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘Are you joking me?’”
—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.