Where everybody knows your name

Not so long ago, a college student curious about the name of that cute guy in art history would have had to ask him, hope the professor called him by name, or pray a friend knew him. Back then, it was not widely known that the dean of students enjoys heavy metal music, cooking, and Ralph Ellison's ''Invisible Man." There was no Compulsive Away Message Checkers club with 1,304 members.

That all changed at Boston University a year ago, when the school became the 10th in the country to join thefacebook.com, a hugely popular, mouse-click-quick route to the aforementioned information that is altering college life. By superimposing a virtual network on the physical geography of the campus, thefacebook has built a sense of connection -- real or imagined, convenient and voyeuristic -- among the undergraduates who are overwhelmingly its users.

Launched by a group of students at Harvard in February 2004, thefacebook has since spread to 573 campuses and 2.4 million users. The free network, available to anyone with ane-mail address at a participating institution, boasts that it typically attracts 80 percent of a school's undergraduate population as well as a smattering of graduate students, faculty members, and recent alumni. Not only a shortcut to information about friends and acquaintances, it's also a way to spread messages about meetings and parties, a forum for frivolity, a link to lost pals, a tool to organize study groups, and a tempting distraction.

''Before, if you had a friend in common with somebody, you'd not find out about it. With facebook you find out so much more. You can see who everybody is friends with. You can see who's in your classes," says sophomore Marla Spivack -- who, according to thefacebook, likes ''Sex and the City," No Doubt, ''Pirates of the Caribbean," and her boyfriend. ''It can be a little scary. I know people who are obsessed with it. It's easy to get addicted."

Thefacebook members post profiles with pictures and varying amounts of personal information, browse other profiles, and invite people to be ''friends," who will then be listed (and counted) on their sites and be able to post messages on their ''walls." Members create sites for existing clubs such as Amnesty International and invent groups such as the Committee for the Advancement of Cowbell that exist only in cyberspace.

''Is thefacebook about expanding your network, or is it a way to extend the conversation you're already having in the dining hall or the dorm?" asks John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. ''Thefacebook defines the community based on a shared real space. That might set it apart."

At BU, 14,007 of the university's 15,846 undergraduates have registered for thefacebook, as have 601 of its 10,858 graduate students. ''If someone mentions a name, and I don't know who it is, I'll check it on facebook," says sophomore J.D. Beebe, who has 258 facebook friends at BU and 250 at other campuses, and who likes the band Sound Tribe Sector 9 and anything written by David Sedaris. ''At first you think you get to know somebody off this. Then you realize you're not going to learn too much by knowing they like music and parties."

Among the more than 1,000 groups on thefacebook at BU is one, the Center for Awkward Interactions on Comm Ave., that describes potentially uncomfortable encounters along the school's main drag. Its list includes running into the ''person you do not know at all besides the fact that you are friends with them on facebook" and passing the ''drunk boy/girl that you once made out with at a party, but have yet to interact with since."

''Facebook" has become both noun (''I looked her up on thefacebook") and verb (''I facebooked him"). About 60 percent of thefacebook members log in daily, and 85 percent log in weekly, says company spokesman Chris Hughes, a Harvard junior speaking by telephone from Paris, where he is studying this semester.

While a lawsuit alleging thefacebook purloined its idea from other Harvard students creating ConnectU.com remains unresolved, thefacebook adds about 30 campuses a month and has been making money for about four months. Though it prohibits obscenity, risque photos and objectionable comments sometimes appear, leading thefacebook to handle 5 to 10 complaints daily about offensive postings.

Gone is the rush of ''poking" -- thefacebook message that's the online equivalent of a jab in the arm -- from friends and strangers that characterized thefacebook's introduction at BU last spring, as evidenced by the lament, on one site devoted to poking, that this year's ''POKE FEST WAS OFFICIALLY A DISASTER!!!"

''At first you'd get pokes from random people. Now the novelty has worn off," Spivack says. ''Last spring it was all people were talking about. Now it's just another thing you have. It's another tool to get in touch with people."

Juniors Melanie Chuaypradit and Branden Monroe-Terry became friends via thefacebook. Until then, they'd seen each other only in psychology class.

''We didn't really talk," says Monroe-Terry, who according to his profile is politically moderate and into music by R. Kelly and John Mayer. ''I saw her on facebook. You browse your classes."

''Once he found my screen name, we started talking online," says Chuaypradit, a fan of ''Kill Bill" and ''Lilo & Stitch." ''If anything, through it I've talked more to people than I would have."

Beebe has friends at the University of Connecticut who used thefacebook to check out sorority members before attending their party. Junior Jenya DeBenedetti looks up classmates whose names she should know by now and belongs to a group that tells her where local bands are playing. Junior Cynthia Gallardo has reconnected with friends from high school and elementary school.

Spivack, who met her current boyfriend the old-fashioned way, has dated two men she met on thefacebook, both of whom are still her friends. She met one when he ''poked" her and contacted the other after reading his profile. ''We had all the same interests. Books. Movies. Everything," she says. ''It's a little weird. It's like a dating website."

That's why Cory Spinney hesitated to join. ''I thought it was an online dating service in disguise, which I wanted no part of," he says. Nevertheless, he and his friend Flora Smith, a fellow sophomore, find thefacebook useful.

''You go to facebook and get information and then subtly try to sneak it into conversation," says Smith. ''You never contact the person."

''You can find out if you have mutual friends," says Spinney.

''You can be like, 'Oh, introduce me,' " says Smith.

Smith has 54 facebook friends. ''You want to have friends," she says. ''You don't randomly reject people because that's mean. This is a respectable amount. It's not great, but it's not like I have 10."

''Some people," says Spivack, ''just make people their friends so they can have a lot of people on their friends list." Chuaypradit, who lists 105 facebook friends, is not among them. Her profile warns, ''If I have never ever met you in my life, don't ask me to be your friend." Anyone dialing the phone number she lists reaches the New York City Rejection Line and the prerecorded news that ''unfortunately, the person who gave you this number does not want to talk to you." Posting a real number, Chuaypradit says, is just ''asking to be bothered."

After one of Spivack's friends went missing earlier this year -- and before he was found safe -- students worried he'd been harmed because his profile listed his phone number. ''You just put this information up and don't really think about who could be reading it," Spivack says.

Thefacebook's become mainstream enough that a blurb about it appears in the latest issue of BU's Core Curriculum newsletter. Two Core Curriculum instructors are objects of thefacebook fan clubs. ''I Heart Sassan," which Sassan Tabatabai has seen, marvels that he teaches boxing, and ''Prusak Changed My Life," which Bernard Prusak is ''assertively not curious" about seeing, declares that ''Prusak is where it's at."

''I prefer to be ignorant," Prusak says. ''I relate to the students in the classroom."

Kenneth Elmore, BU's dean of students, joined thefacebook 20 days after its BU launch. He has 699 facebook friends, each screened by his office. ''I don't think my staff will approve you as a friend if you're holding alcohol," Elmore says. His profile, which lists his date of birth as Jan. 1, 1985, two years before he received a master's degree in education from BU, serves as a reminder of the virtues of critical reading.

''For some students, thefacebook is a good way to start the conversation," Elmore says. ''Roughly once a day, someone will say, 'Hey, by the way, that book is my favorite book, too.' Or, 'I didn't think a guy your age would like the Clash.' Or, 'How did you get into Anthrax?' "

It's too soon to say whether a tech-savvy generation of college students will stick with thefacebook or move onto the next new thing, but the network is definitely here for now.

''I don't tend to trust what I see on thefacebook. I find it a little creepy if you know their name before they've introduced themselves," says Beebe. ''It creates a lot more openness, to know who people are, but it also creates a little awkwardness. It's good to know who goes to your school. It's weird to know who's friends with who."

''Especially in a large university like BU," says Spinney, ''it unified people in a way."

''It's interesting," says his friend Smith, ''to see how you really are connected to a lot of people."

J.D. BEEBE

Concentration: advertising and film

Favorite music: Sound Tribe Sector 9, Death Cab for Cutie, Bloc Party, Kaki King, Pat Metheny, Sufjan Stevens, Kings of Convenience, Funkadelic . . .

Favorite movies: ''Anchorman," ''Napoleon Dynamite," ''Garden State," ''Van Wilder," ''Power Burn to Yoga," anything really that busts a gut or makes you feel terribly awkward

Favorite quote: ''History will be kind to me, forI plan [sic] to write it." -- Sir Winston Churchill

MELANIE CHUAYPRADIT

Political views: liberal

Interests: art, fashion design, Boston, photography, graphic design

Favorite music: rap, hip-hop, R&B, reggae, pop, Top 40, old school

Favorite books: ''The Prince of Tides," ''The Great Gatsby," ''L'etranger," ''The Things They Carried," ''The Catcher in the Rye," ''The Bell Jar," ''Native Son"

CYNTHIA GALLARDO

Home town: Queens Baby!!!, NY

Favorite movies: ''Titanic," ''Breakfast at Tiffany's," I even liked ''Dawn of the Dead," which I will never see again!

Clubs and jobs: As of right now I am unemployed

Groups: Speakers and Students of Spanish, Latinos Unidos, ACT FOR CHANGE, NEW YORK (NYC), Law & Order Aficionados, I Don't Have an iPod, Saved by the Bell Saved Me . . .

BRANDEN MONROE-TERRY

Concentration: journalism and sociology

High school: East Hartford High School

Favorite music: R. Kelly, Mase, Switchfoot, Fabolous, Sade, 2Pac, the Strokes, Brandy, Biggie, Gavin DeGraw, Jill Scott

Favorite quote: ''I don't want to be (just) the best. I want to grow so tall that nobody can reach me . . ." -- James Dean

MARLA SPIVACK

Interests: ''Sex and the City," shopping, Dane Cook, ''Nip/Tuck," photography, ''Family Guy," concerts, pugs, Will Ferrell, Conan, Dave Chappelle, pad Thai, Mitch Hedberg, ''The OC," any stand-up comedy, the beach

Favorite books: ''She's Come Undone," ''Harry Potter," ''The Da Vinci Code"

Favorite movies: ''Pirates of the Caribbean," ''Finding Nemo," ''Shrek," ''Garden State," ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," ''Forrest Gump"

KENNETH ELMORE (not pictured)

Occupation: Dean of students

Interests: reading, basketball, cooking, hearing the stories of other people, art

Favorite music: Public Enemy, Prince, Anthrax, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, the Clash, Parliament-Funkadelic, A Tribe Called Quest, Los Lonely Boys

Favorite books: ''Invisible Man," ''The Grapes of Wrath," ''Woman Hollering Creek"

Favorite movies: ''Raging Bull," ''Do the Right Thing," ''Midnight Express," ''Real Women Have Curves"