College students sound off on social networking likes and dislikes


Google is talking to several top online game developers about creating a broader social networking site that would offer social games and could compete with Facebook—and in interviews with ABC News, several college students offered their suggestions for what Google could do to make them abandon Facebook. When Ryan Khuri, 21, a junior majoring in English/philosophy at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, joined Facebook, he saw it as “the simple alternative to MySpace.” But now, Khuri said, Facebook “seems to be building more and more clutter.” Northwestern medical student Jack Dougherty, 22, agreed. Although he deleted his Facebook account a few years ago to help prevent his spending too much time on his computer, he said, one thing that would make the site more appealing to him is to simplify it. Many college students cite third-party applications as the main cause of Facebook clutter. “The constant invites to join them are annoying,” said Lauren Walters, 21, a graduate student at Clemson University in South Carolina, who said she uses Facebook for “social networking, and not for playing games.” While Facebook users can send video messages to each other and post videos to each other’s “walls,” many students point to the absence of a Skype-like video chat feature. Walters said she would be open to trying Google’s new social networking site but isn’t sure she’d leave Facebook for it, although the ability to chat with other users on the site via webcam could possibly win her over…

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