Facebook is hoping to connect students stuck in their homes while attending college with its new social media platform, Facebook Campus.
“(Facebook Campus) is a college-only space designed to help students connect with their classmates and their school community all in one place, even when they can’t be together,” said product manager Charmaine Hung. “We do think that campus is more relevant than ever with COVID-19. We see many students not returning to campus and classes are now all happening remote and online.”
Facebook Campus hopes to reconnect students to their college clubs and friends through their pilot program. The program began in mid-September in 30 schools across the country, including the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
“We do know that university experiences are quite different, depending on what school you go to,” Hung said. “We really wanted to make sure we build the product that fits the needs of everyone.”
To do so, Facebook looked into different criteria to create a good sample size.
“Some of the things we took into account when deciding on these 30 schools were things like geographic diversity, a diverse student population, a mix of small and large undergrad bodies, and some schools that are specialized in different areas, for example, liberal arts schools,” Hung said.
Made with the help of college students, Campus will function as a separate, dedicated space within the larger Facebook platform, allowing only users with a “.edu” email to join.
“As we were building this, we had what we like to call a ‘student council,’” Hung said. “We were getting their feedback along the way.”
Once users join, they will verify their email address and create their campus profile.
“We realized that having some verification that you belong to that school to participate in Campus was really important,” Hung said. “Once you get in, you’ll be able to create groups and events that are all bounded and specific to your school… It’s not a completely different identity that you can take, but it is basically a different network of people.”
Additionally, users will have access to Facebook’s campus directory which will allow them to search for others using graduation year, specific classes, majors or their dorms. According to Hung, because Campus is separate from the larger Facebook platform, this specific information will only be shown on users’ Campus profile, not their main profile.
The final feature of Facebook Campus is a campus chat room feature where students can pick and choose which rooms to join, similar to the functioning “Groups” feature in the larger platform.
“Students can create chatrooms for their dorm, club, classes and more,” Hung said. “Campus chat rooms don’t actually require you to choose and invite people like group chats. Instead, once you create the chatroom, people in that specific group can just pick and choose ones they want to pop into.”
Facebook hopes that their new platform will allow students to continue to connect and interact with one another even when they are away from campus.
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