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Since Facebook opened up to everybody, several startups have tried to go after those yearning for the good ole’ days when you needed a .edu address to register for the social network. The latest attempt comes from eGlints, which closely mirrors Facebook in terms of features and design.
Upon logging in, you will quickly notice what appears to be a mirror image of the Facebook News Feed. From there, the user profile is also almost identical to Facebook as well, featuring some basic information at the top, a feed of what you’ve been up to in the middle, and comments from your friends at the bottom. Status updates are also included, and thumbnails of a few friends and photo albums occupy the sidebar.
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Moving along to the friends feature of eGlints, the similarity to Facebook is once again readily apparent. You can sort friends by school, and then filter down to those that have recently updated their profiles. The service has a search feature built in for finding friends that are already on the network.
eGlints also includes a Groups feature, where users can create either global or school-specific groups. As you might guess at this point, the Groups also closely resemble those of Facebook, featuring a list of members and a discussion board for talking about the topic. There is also a feature for browsing Groups, which you can filter by school or global.
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Overall, eGlints is a very solid attempt at creating a social network exclusively for college students. While some might fault it for a lack of originality, closely mirroring Facebook is a smart move as users will quickly be able to find their way around once they decide to check it out. The big question is whether or not college students are really looking for a college-only network, or if they’ve come to accept the openness of Facebook.