We have been hard at work developing a new browse page! With the addition of new features, users can view prosective roommates' 'About Me' previews, hometowns, mutual friends, and roommates already chosen by that prospective roommate.

By expanding users' mini-profiles on the browse page, we are facilitating more conversation within your communities' network.

We are looking forward to further empower users by giving them the ability to discover more commonalities through these expanded profiles, along with the ability to more easily communicate each other with our new emailing feature. All new features are now live and available to users on the new browse page. With this new information at users' fingertips, the conversation starters are limitless and the roommate matches are bound to be serendipitous!

We're excited to head to Denver tomorrow to particpate in the second annual Startup Alley at this year's EDUCAUSE, the largest IT conference for higher education.

While we were lucky enough to be invited to the first one, which took place in Philly last year, we can't wait to meet all the other great startups, vendors, and speakers that will be joining us this week.

If you'll be around, definitely stop by our table in Startup Alley to say hi and snag some RoomSync swag! 

This post was originally published on Higher Ed Live. Find out more about roommate matching software.

TJ Logan, University of Florida Associate Director of Housing for Administrative Services, and Robert Castellucci, President & CEO of RoomSync, join the show to discuss how University of Florida has used a Facebook-based roommate matching tool to reduce conflict and increase student satisfaction and success.

In an industry often obsessed with Likes and Retweets, Facebook-based roommate matching is shaping up to be one of the single strongest example of social media ROI in higher ed.

This blog post is based on my presentation at the Georgetown Innovation Summit which begins at 2:53:00. 

To most people, hacking represents something negative. But I prefer to think of it as designing a workaround to achieve a desired result. By paying attention to these hacks, Higher Ed can gain all sorts of inisights to improve the overall student experience.

How Facebook learns from user hacking

In 2004, Facebook was growing, fast. Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the team needed to decide what feature to build next. They had to consider not only the time it would take to build the feature, but also the additional support costs.

One of the features being considered was the ability to upload photos besides your profile photo. Yes, there was actually a time when you could not upload your photo album to Facebook and tag all of your friends. It seems obvious to us now, however at the time it was not quite as clear that this was a feature that users wanted.

When the Facebook team looked at how people were using the site, they noticed users were changing their profile photo multiple times each day. Users wanted to show off their new photos and they came up with this 'hack' as a way to achieve their goal. 

In 2003 B.F. (before Facebook), students would receive the name, email and phone number of their assigned roommate and give them a call. It never occurred to them to look that person up online because there was nowhere to look.

By 2005 A.F., more than 85% of college students were on Facebook; each wanting to know everything they could about their new roommate to be sure that the next year of their life would not be spent in agony (desired result). The hack that students across the country constructed was to research their roommate on Facebook and if they did not like what they saw, call into the housing office and ask for a new roommate.

I have spoken with hundreds of people who work in on-campus housing and 99.9% of them experience some level of Facebook related roommate calls. The only department that did not experience them simply decided to withhold the names of assigned roommates until the students meet on the first day of classes.

So there is the hack. Now, how do you fix the process by incorporating the hack? Our clients achieve this through RoomSync because we empower students to search for roommates on Facebook. They are given access to all potential roommates before the assignments are made. The result? Users who want to be in control of the matching process are happy and housing departments do not receive any calls about Facebook.

How are students hacking your processes? Are they hacking their room like this Berkeley freshman? Try re-examining and thinking of ways to incorporate these hacks to improve the overall student experience. Do you have examples of hacks in Higher Ed? Leave a comment below!

My internship at RoomSync has been anything but traditional. I “loitered” around the (rather inviting) office for a few weeks before the program officially started, then, after the first few days, took to helping out. Roomsync's environment, as you may have peeked at in our various photos and videos, is very laid back. It's not uncommon to call it “the dorm room office,” which makes sense, considering our company's mission is to keep students in school by reducing the problems caused by mismatched roommates.

Once the actual internship started, the office became more lively and fun. The creative and productive nature of 8 other people all working quasi-independently was astounding. Between the basketball hoop, the endless supply (as far as I can tell) of Funyuns, and immense comfort of the big red couch, RoomSunc HQ feels more like home than home does.

If you're looking for an internship that isn't doing mundane work for a Fortune 500 company or somebody you know's dad, RoomSync is the place. I never would have thought that a work environment could be so much fun, yet foster real education about the business and higher education worlds. I learned to sell to businesses at RoomSync; I learned UX. I honed my power nap skill to a tee.

I'd recommend interning at RoomSync 110%.