Reading A Textbook On Facebook? Surely Not!

PRLog (Press Release) - Dec 08, 2009 -
I was doing homework, then I ended up on Facebook
As everyone knows, Facebook & studying have never been very good bed partners. As students will openly admit, frequently they log on to the net with the fine intention of arduous study, but five hours later realize they've written little more than a few 'wall posts', become a 'fan' of a the latest reality star and perhaps completed a 'Which Friends character" style quiz. With over 900,000 members, The facebook group entitled, "I was doing homework, then I ended up on Facebook" certainly goes a long way to substantiate this point!

Shift towards student's using facebook for studying
Things may be starting to change however. In June 2009, the guys at  http://bookboon.com launched their own facebook application http://apps.facebook.com/bookboon to allow students to download all of their over 200 Textbooks directly from within the social networking site - totally for free. Since its launch less than 6 months ago, the application has gained over 20,000 users from all over the world, generating more than 50,000 downloads.The huge popularity of it's Facebook Textbook Application has surprised even the Edward A Blake the BookBoon's Marketing Manager for the UK & the USA , whom freely admits that the app was merely intended to as another means of connecting to their user base. He was initially skeptical as to just how successful it would be, given the fact that Facebook isn't usually associated with hard-core study activity. "Quite frankly, I expected it (the app) to generate perhaps 20-30 new users a day. However, just over the last few weeks we are beginning to seesomething in the region of 200-250 new users a day; something I certainly wouldn't have predicted when we first launched the app!"


Social Networking sites - Tommorrow's Classroom?
Could the enormous success of BookBoon.com perhaps herald the start of students finally using Facebook and other social networking sites for the greater academic good? Only time will tell of course, but when you look at the rapid developments being made in lightweight e-readers whilst also considering that today's student population spends more time upon Social Network sites such as Facebook and Twitter than any other, one thing is for certain. The business model for both University bookstores traditional textbook publishers around the globe looks very much in doubt.