Facebook

CollegeOnly, a Social Network Just for the University Set By JENNA WORTHAM A screen shot of CollegeOnly. When Facebook arrived at my university near the end of my fourth year, I remember feeling a huge wave of relief. Not because I had an easy way to keep in touch with my friends after college — although that was nice, too — but because the site arrived when we were nearly finished with our undergraduate careers. We didn’t have to worry about whether or not a satirical status update or photos from the weekend’s revelry would threaten our standing or ability to get a job. But Josh Weinstein, a New York-based entrepreneur, says sharing photographs, trading gossip and obsessing about your crushes are now just part of the fun of being in college. It’s what he’s hoping to replicate with a new social networking start-up called CollegeOnly. “Facebook is different from what it used to be,” he said, “which was pictures, interacting with people and seeing what’s going on.” Mr. Weinstein has already introduced two start-ups geared toward the student body. One, called GoodCrush, was a collegiate matchmaking service. The other, RandomDorm, randomly matched college students with one another for video conversations. “We were thinking about a series of sites and connecting them like I Can Has Cheezburger,” he said. “But then we realized one central social site for college students was the way to go. And then we realized we were building something to the effect of Facebook for college students.” On Wednesday, the service will be introduced in beta at seven colleges and universities, including Mr. Weinstein’s alma mater, Princeton. The company plans to slowly extend its reach over time. Like Facebook, CollegeOnly lets users post general updates and events and keep tabs on their friends in a centralized news feed. In addition, they will be able to post messages in preset categories. One, called “Missed Connections,” lets students gush over cute classmates. Another, called “After Party,” will be a place to gossip about the weekend’s events. Unlike Facebook, CollegeOnly allows for anonymous posts and updates. There will be some light moderation, however, Mr. Weinstein said, to avoid the kinds of mean-spirited and vicious comments that were common on Juicy Campus, a defunct college message board. Mr. Weinstein said he was most excited about CollegeOnly’s photo-sharing features. “I think people will like it because they don’t want to post their photos now for their employers, parents and high school siblings to see,” he said. The company already has some notable venture capitalists behind it. The company has raised a total of $1.15 million from SoftBank Capital and FirstMark Capital as well as from several angel investors, including David Kidder, who founded Clickable. Perhaps the most interesting person on the roster is Peter Thiel, who was among the earliest investors in Facebook. But Mr. Weinstein said he did not see CollegeOnly usurping Facebook’s status as the dominant social networking hub on the Web. Instead, he said the two could co-exist, with Facebook serving as the primary way to keep tabs on birthdays, popular links and news articles and a way to quickly get in touch with a classmate or parent. CollegeOnly, he said, is “an opportunity to connect college students in ways that isn’t being offered.”