By Devin Walls | Staff Writer
The social networking phenomenon has grown during the 21st century, with millions of people logging on every day to share their thoughts, keep in touch and waste some time. Of these networking sites, Facebook is arguably the most popular among students pursuing higher education.
Developed in January 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard University, the Web site was originally intended to be a universal social networking site among the Harvard dormitories. By March of 2004, the Web site had expanded to all Ivy League schools and eventually to most universities in North America.
Until 2005, when high school students were able to join Facebook by invitation, Facebook was restricted to the use of college students. In September 2006, the Web site opened to anyone 13 and up, with a valid e-mail address. Now everybody and their grandmother has a Facebook profile, quite literally in some cases. Joshua Buckman, a senior Art major, said he was surprised over the summer when he logged on and both his grandparents and his mother had sent him friend requests.
However, Facebook’s roots are still in higher education. More and more universities are now using the Web site to market themselves in the social networking community in the form of “Fan” pages. APSU has jumped on board and has done so with some results.
According to BlueFuego.com, a web-based marketing Web site specializing in higher education, 1,035 universities now have Fan pages. Over the course of 90 days the Web site sifted through all the pages for colleges and universities and announced the findings that some may find surprising.
Students at APSU are aware of the school’s status as “Tennessee’s fastest growing university.” Now they’re taking that reputation online. APSU’s Fan page ranks as the 25th fastest growing out of over 1,000.
In the medium-sized school category, which consists of 171 pages for schools that have an enrollment record of 5,000–9,999, APSU is the eighth fastest growing. Just this year it took the APSU page only three months to increase its membership by 254 percent. These astonishing results attest to the university’s ever increasing popularity that will likely continue in the future.
– Devin Walls, Staff Writer
