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August 11, 2010, 04:38 PM ET
Colleges Use Facebook to Let Freshmen Find Their Own Roommates
This summer, incoming freshmen at five universities can use a Facebook application to find their roommates. Students can use the application, RoomBug, to fill out forms about their preferences for living and qualities they'd like to see in a roommate. Students can then request a match, which the other incoming freshman must confirm.
RoomBug is hardly the first service to let students match themselves: Tulane University announced a partnership with online service RoommateClick two years ago.
But RoomBug, which the company U-Match LLC just rolled out at Emory University, the University of Florida, Temple University, Wichita State University, and William Paterson University of New Jersey, tries to go where the students are.
"Everyone is on Facebook," says Robert Castellucci, the service's co-founder and sales director.
Over a quarter of the University of Florida's incoming freshmen have added the Facebook application, he says, but numbers on how many matches the service helped make are not yet available.
Each day on Wired Campus, The Chronicle's technology reporters highlight key IT developments and put them in perspective.
Comments
1. pbissett - August 12, 2010 at 09:01 am
This method could also be used for students looking for other students for "car pooling" as well as room mates.
2. elafouge - August 12, 2010 at 10:27 am
Maureen Dowd of the NY Times wrote a piece on this new Facebook feature recently: Don't Send in the Clones at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/opinion/11dowd.html?_r=1&ref=maureendowd. She put a slightly different spin on it than does Facebook. Worth reading.
3. jillbateman - August 13, 2010 at 09:00 am
Appreciated the Maureen Dowd article - well said.
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