College networks are buckling under the strain.
More than half the users are outside college networks, which is where Facebook built its core audience.
Twenty members of Facebook's sales and marketing departments would interact with the OppNet kids in two-minute sessions, on fixed topics: Careers, College, Networks, Community/Background, Books.
But Napster is a hit with students, especially because high-speed college networks enable the sharing of music among campuses quickly.
In fact, the number of multimedia files that flow through college networks, or any network, for that matter, is increasing daily as movie clips, video games, animated films, commercials and radio broadcasts proliferate on the Web.
Given that much of the use of college networks appears to be recreational, not to mention potentially illegal, some people may wonder why colleges do not simply turn off the spigot.
Chris Bevilacqua, an investor and consultant who has spearheaded the creation of several college networks, said, "If consumers were that upset by the costs, they'd be dropping their cable subscriptions in droves".
Is there a problem with the technology that we've missed?" HUGE Internet traffic jams on college networks, common when the online music service Napster was flying high, were supposed to be a thing of the past.
This spring, Facebook opened its pearly gates, enabling myself and other members of the class of '07 to graduate from our college networks into those of the real world.
In February, Facebook merged its high-school and college networks, allowing all its users to send friend requests back and forth and, subsequently, to view one another's profiles.
