John Norvell, a lecturer in Anthropology who teaches Anthropology 199, “Life On-Line: Culture, Technology and Democracy,” said in March that an online community of college students might not be completely separate from a real college community.

“The current undergraduate population came of age in the information era and takes it for granted. There are no distinctions between online and offline life,” Norvell said.

And thefacebook.com spokesperson Chris R. Hughes ’06 said the popularity of his website reflected this shift caused by the internet.

“Thefacebook.com is important because it shows the beginning of an increasingly important role of the internet in students’ lives,” Hughes said.

SOCIAL NETWORK

Only four months have passed since Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06 launched thefacebook.com, and the site has garnered more than 10,000 Harvard-affiliated members.

Thefacebook.com also serves as an umbrella website for smaller, exclusive communities, spanning 34 universities and regularly adding more.

It has created such a splash that references to it have become integrated in campus lingo and culture.

“This is something that affects you on a daily basis,” Lessin said. “There are hundreds of people in this school who I would nod to on the street, but thefacebook.com makes people you don’t know that well real individuals. I think it facilitates random conversations and connections.”

Unlike other online networking services such as Friendster, thefacebook.com is designed for college students who can only access pictures and information pertaining to people affiliated with their school or confirmed friends at other schools.

Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 said thefacebook.com was “an incredible tool for gathering quick information” when forming study groups or organizing rallies.

But Mahan also said he feared that thefacebook.com had already “undermined the sense of community at Harvard” since it monopolized time that students might otherwise spend at community events such as sports games or House activities.

“Students construct an online identity that can place them in a box,” Mahan said. “There’s nothing wrong with a social network but I am concerned that people are too fixated on what’s there and not concerned at all about the information that’s not there.”

President of the Harvard College Democrats Andrew J. Frank ’05 said he paid $200 for a series of ads on the site to promote a May trip to New Hampshire and that he even created a College Dems profile.

“It provides a great resource to sort people very quickly,” Frank said. “This allows us to group members by Houses, by interests, or by where they’ll be this summer.”