Facebook, whose average age is gradually increasing, aims to regain university youth with its Campus application. Let’s take a closer look at what Facebook Campus has to offer, which has been active in 30 universities in the USA for now.
Born in 2004 as a university student’s project, Facebook is getting ready to return to university after gaining fame and costing the whole world.
As anyone more or less interested in technology today knows, Facebook was a project that Mark Zuckerberg started at Harvard University where he left before finishing.
They announced, “We are returning to our roots”
Zuckerberg’s goal that day was to create a network where his college friends socialized. It was also successful in this.
An application called Campus was launched to rejuvenate Facebook, whose population is now aging. The company announced the project, “We are going back to our roots.”
Facebook reinvented Facebook
The project, with the comments “Facebook reinvented Facebook”, is aimed to be a ‘youth vaccine’ for Facebook.
Collaborations were made with 30 universities in the USA as part of the pilot project. But unfortunate is that among these 30 universities, Harvard, where Zuckerberg founded Facebook, is not included.
The first requirement is a Facebook account
To access the campus, students must first have a Facebook account. Then, a Campus profile can be created by entering facebook.com/campus.
Campus members have Facebook Campus News Feeds in addition to a standard Facebook News Feed. It is possible to switch between the two news streams.
University email required
In order to access the Facebook Campus, students must use the e-mail addresses provided by the university with the “edu” extension, and specify their graduation years.
Optionally, other information such as major, class, hometown and minor can be entered. Thus, a Facebook Campus profile is created.
Posts are only seen by those on the Campus
After the campus profile is created, students have the opportunity to follow the clubs and activities specific to their school and participate in the conversation.
The project makes it easy for students to connect with classmates who share similar interests, while only those on campus can see the posts.
Communication will continue when school is over
Facebook Campus is not just for students; It is designed to keep users in touch with each other after graduation.
When we look at the main features of the campus, we see that the titles “Special News Flow to Campus”, “Campus Directory” and “New Ways to Chat” stand out.
Campus Exclusive News Feed
In the “Campus Special News Feed”, students encounter content specially prepared for their universities. Within this news feed, classmates can see updates from groups and events.
Here, students can create study groups, schedule virtual concerts, and seek advice from university-specific groups and events.
Campus directory
In the “campus directory”, members are provided with a useful infrastructure to find people at their universities and meet new people.
Here, students can find classmates by class, subject, year and more, as in the early days when Facebook was a university-specific network.
Campus Talks
Real-time chat rooms called Campus Conversations stand out as “new ways of chatting”. Students can create chat rooms for their dormitories, clubs or other groups they are a part of on campus.
Members do not have personal profiles on the campus that they can share with as on standard Facebook. Students can socialize by sharing in communities, messaging environment and groups on campus.
More than 2.7 billion monthly active users
With over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook is the largest social network worldwide.
Facebook also owns the most used communication services such as WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger.
Young people do not prefer Facebook
However, the youth’s interest in Facebook is decreasing. Teens prefer other social networks like YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram more.
According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of U.S. users aged 13 to 17 are Facebook users.
Lowering the average target age
Although Facebook stated that with the Campus project, it aims to help students who are away from school due to the COVID-19 outbreak to keep in touch, it is clear that this is not the only cause of the project.
In summary; Facebook wants to regain the young audience that has moved away from the platform in recent years and to lower the age average.