Weird and bordering on creepy, Roomsurf has been presenting itself to high school seniors as a paid service for finding roommates on Facebook.
The company has little influence over how colleges match up roommates, but charges $4.95 to $9.95 for that, the New York Times reported. Prosepective students might be able to request each other as roomies after meeting one another in the groups Roomsurf has created on Facebook.
Roomsurf appears to have formed groups for more than 150 different colleges’ incoming class of 2015. Each has the school’s logo and a welcome message, with no reference to the fact that the school didn’t create the group.
The Times has suggested that Roomsurf may be engaging in deceptive marketing tactics, quoting an official from Hamilton College to that effect.
Not using your real name on Facebook goes against the site’s rules, but whether this company’s founder has crossed the line has yet to be called. We’ve asked spokespeople for the social network whether any rules have been broken here and will let you know what we find out.
The Facebook groups list the creator as Justin Blackwell, and on LinkedIn you can find that Roomsurf’s co-founder and chief executive officer is Justin Gaither.
He told the Times on the telephone that Blackwell is his middle name. But you can’t message him on his Facebook page if you’re not already his friend.
Meanwhile, Roomsurf’s webpage now has a sign saying its under construction — actually, it’s written on an eraseable whiteboard on a dorm room door filling the entire screen.
Apparently Gaither had gotten some flak from colleges earlier this year and told the Washington Post’s blog that he would become more transparent in his doings on Facebook. All he did since then was drop the U from the original name of his company, URoomsurf.com.
Update: We’d sent him a friend request so we could talk to him, and then asked Facebook if Justin was violating any of the site’s rules. We received the following response:
We have disabled the account of the person who created these groups for violating our policies. He has been removed as an admin from all groups. The content of the groups does not violate our policies, and the remaining admins all appear to be actual students at these colleges and universities – and not affiliated with Roomsurf.com. Since the groups do not violate our policies, we’ve left them active.
Readers, what do you think about Roomsurf’s doings on Facebook?
Do people really share rooms like that?
Comment by lego — December 8, 2010 @ 5:21 pm
Did Facebook deactivate this guy's account because of your article?
Comment by mnemonic_device — December 9, 2010 @ 1:56 am
Actually, he's been at it since 2008!!!
http://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/12/18/facebo...
Comment by Daniel — December 9, 2010 @ 8:41 am
There are still groups on there created by SHILLS for this company, and those student admins are gullible noobs to facebook most likely on the companies payroll. Just like CHEGG uses students to SPAM for their company which violates FB rules. I sent strong warnings to CHEGG about this, trying to get students into trouble this way. Once your account is banned using your .edu address you signed up with, that's it. This is exactly why FB should have NOT opened up to you people.
But what amazes me more is the stupidity of people to go into these groups in the first place. They should be created by schools, but now that's too late since FB did way with this group format. There are 2 groups on there run by the same guy. Don't know which school he plans on attending, but it's BS. And like I said, don't trust people who do not join their school network.
Comment by anon — December 11, 2010 @ 8:14 am
The only people that are deceived are the colleges. Students don't perceive Facebook groups as "official." There is no such thing as an official group. Students perceive class groups as places to meet future classmates to make friends… so Roomsurf's creation of these groups doesn't change that. Facebook even says that anyone can create a group.
Facebook Pages are for an institution's "official" presence on Facebook. Most studnet's understand that difference, but I don't think the institutions do.
Comment by Katie — December 11, 2010 @ 10:38 am
This is an interesting thread. I just heard about this roomsurf website today. A couple students in class were talking about it (high school substitute student-teacher here) and how its advertising on some college's page was annoying, but that they were thinking about joining because they saw the amount of kids enrolling in the same college doing it.
Other kids were then asking about it, despite my attempts to redirect attention to class discussion. Ugh, the pain in trying to get a class of second semester seniors to focus for just FIVE minutes on a discussion about an in-class video–they didn't even read anything so it's not like they needed to put effort into B.S.ing me.
But anyhow, I digress. I poked around online a little between classes to see what's up with this roomsurf thing. Excuse me for my lack of expertise in the field of E-ethics, but I don't see anything wrong with this company establishing a presence on facebook and don't understand the bad press it's getting. "Anon" seems to be blowing this way out of proportion, as is the OP.
After checking out the website, it looks legitimate and they seem to have many members–whatever they're doing, it's clearly working because kids are using it. Regarding the advertising, it makes sense for them to do some of it through facebook because so many high-schoolers are always online and that's their target market. Lots of other companies do this too. Kudos to them for taking advantage of social networking and getting with the times. Social networking's everywhere now and used professionally in many ways. Some teachers I know even make their students blog for writing credit!
I'm sorry but I don't see anything remotely creepy about their facebook page or actual website, so I am not seeing how you arrived at that assessment. Their roommate matching has to be pretty legit if so many are using it instead of the matches colleges provide (or maybe just spectacularly marketed, I'll give the OP that). Suggesting a possible alternative in what I *think* is basically just picking a roommate, as opposed to having them poorly or randomly assigned, seems pretty helpful, if anything.
I personally really, really despised my freshman year roommate and actually did use a matching service to voluntarily pick him, provided by the college itself. The college's matching program was clearly lacking as I turned out to be completely incompatible with this guy. If this company effectively makes up for what the colleges lack, then all the power to 'em. I probably could have benefited from such a thing if it were around when I was going into freshman year.
I don't really understand the motivation in portraying a seemingly small, relatively new company in such a poor light. I mean it's obvious they're out to make profit, but it's in their best interest to provide the best services possible so as to grow and thrive. Facebook is a logical place to start. Do the OP and, especially, "anon" perhaps have hidden agendas?
Kids planning to attend these schools probably don't care much for talking with college officials or administrators they'll probably never meet in person anyway. The groups they join–regardless of whether or not they're official/created by genuine college representatives–seem to focus on communicating with other incoming students: to introduce themselves, talk about majors, discuss possible roommate arrangements on their own, etc.
I also do not believe colleges themselves would have reason to be angry. If the thing works, then presumably there would be a lesser incidence of roommate issues and room switching B.S. and all that other crap to take care of in the dorms. Dorm life sucks enough. Mine did especially due to my [expletive] roommate.
I think they have a good idea and deserve the benefit of the doubt. When my new daughter gets to college age, I want her to have the best college experience possible (with good decision-making, of course). The freshman year college experience would no doubt include having a compatible roommate.
It seems like there's a lot of media-generated hype and overreacting about this whole thing. Dramatic criticism is coming from people who may just well have ulterior motives. I don't for sure, but much of the posted rants just seems fishy to me.
Just some food for thought.
It will be interesting to see how this roomsurf thing develops over the next few years nonetheless.
Comment by Malik — March 4, 2011 @ 8:30 pm