Eager to meet new people at Syracuse University, Jessica Goldstone went straight to Facebook. Goldstone, an undeclared freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, caught word of another social networking site, DateMySchool.com. Hearing that it resembled Facebook, she created an account only to find that none of her friends had heard of the site.

‘DateMySchool.com is amusing to browse through, but I’m not interested in finding a mate online,’ Goldstone said.

Social media site Date My School was co-founded by Columbia University MBA students Jean Meyer and Balazs Alexa in November 2010. Although the URL describes the site as a dating site, it can also be the go-to place to discover new friends, study partners, work contacts and dates on campus and locally, according to Melanie Wallner, director of public relations of Date My School.

Thus far, Date My School has launched at more than 300 universities. Though it provides a simple, accessible interface focused on connecting people in college, some students who have heard of the site are either skeptical or uninterested.

‘Freshmen usually search through the Class of 2015 Facebook group to see the people going to our school next year, and if we think they are cute, sometimes we will friend them,’ said Lita Talisman, an undeclared freshman in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.‘A lot of the time, though, it doesn’t go any further than that. DateMySchool.com is better for a person who is actually looking for a relationship but a lot of students just want to hook up and not settle down.’

What sets Date My School apart from other social media sites is the ability to see profile views, Wallner said. Whereas Facebook users cannot know for certain who is viewing their pages, Date My School provides a tab on account holders’ pages to see which users are visiting your profile while tracking profiles that you’ve visited. The website is also exclusive to users with .edu email addresses, a draw for college students.

‘DMS is the only reverse social network — it shows you people you don’t know but can trust,’ Wallner said. ‘Because of the filtering functions, you only see the people you want to contact and who want to be contacted by you.’

However, there are also disadvantages to its privacy features. Since the site is open to anyone with an .edu address, staff and alumni can access the website as well. Additionally, there are no friending or authorization settings for who can message a user. Once the site matches people to a user’s particular interests, those same people can openly view the user’s profile information.

‘It’s like Match.com for college students. It could catch on, but I feel like college students would be scared to use it,’ said junior English and Textual Studies major Griffin Bohen-Meissner. ‘I’m uneasy about trying it out because of all the horror stories I’ve heard about putting your information up online. You have to be really careful.’

sostern@syr.edu

Published on August 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm