Facebook 'Pulse' tracks IU trends

The makers of Facebook, that ultimate online procrastination device, have found one more way for students to put off their schoolwork. \nIt's called Pulse, and it tracks user trends by tallying the number of student listings for popular movies, books and other categories. \nWith statistics from the intriguing -- most common hometown -- to the depressing -- only 16 percent of female students are interested in dating -- Pulse marks the first time Facebook has produced a virtual census of the enormous amount of data it collects on the 18- to 24-year-old age group.\n"The idea to create Pulse has been in the works for a long time," Facebook spokesman Chris Hughes said. "We wanted to synthesize the information people were putting in their profiles in order to see what the standards are when it comes to music, movies and books and what are the passing favorites -- what's hot and what's not."\nSenior and Facebook guru Jamson Engleman, who co-founded the Facebook group "What's hot and what's not," said he's not too worried about competition from the new feature.\n"It's interesting to see how IU students compare to other students all across Facebook," he said. "I don't really know what the sample size is, so I don't know how valid the results are. But it shows that IU seems to be pretty mainstream as a whole."\nEngleman, a Facebook member since Sept. 2004, said he thinks the makers of Facebook need to market the new section more effectively. The site lists a small link on the bottom of the user's home page. \nBusiness Communications professor Jeanette Heidewald cautions against taking the Pulse statistics too seriously.\n"It goes back to making snap judgments again," she said. "Without having legitimate statistics, we end up making judgments based on very faulty data. We've fallen into that pattern in our culture of listening to opinions and thinking that we're listening to legitimate statistics."\nFacebook allows people with an e-mail address ending in ".edu" to post pictures and personal information on its online directory. The Facebook revolution invaded IU late in the spring of 2004 and has since become a staple of college life nationwide. Eighty-five percent of students at more than 2,000 colleges and universities use it, according to the Web site. Users can search for their friends, send each other messages, find things in common or view each other's pictures.\nSearching for attributes people have in common on a large scale is something to which ordinary people haven't previously had access, Heidewald said.\n"One thing I find interesting about Facebook is you have access to details about people rather than looking at people and instantly making judgments," she said. "It goes beyond the externally obvious. When we look for friends, we look for things in common. Too often, we make the mistake of only looking at the outside."\nSince the site's launch in Feb. 2004, Facebook has added a photo album section and a way for users to explain how they know each of their online friends. As the site continues to evolve, so do the ways students use it.\n"It used to be a way to meet people and network and see who could have the most friends," Engleman said. "Now it's just a way to communicate with people. It's almost taken over (AOL Instant Messenger) and e-mail in some ways. My roommates and I have actually talked about this -- what was college like before Facebook"