There are more than 2,000 members on the Chico State Class of 2017 Facebook page, a group managed by online businesses that sell textbooks and roommate finding services.
The Facebook class page is not affiliated with the university, said Joe Wills, Chico State’s spokesman. It is administered by people who work for the websites textsurf and roomsurf, which promote students buying and selling textbooks and finding roommates using their services.
The companies hire a student from each campus across the country to advertise to other students about its services, said Markus Tungol, junior health services administration major and roomsurf’s student ambassador for Chico State.
“It’s mainly just promoting their services,” Tungol said. “If there’s a deal or special offer, they want me to relay it to the Facebook page for incoming freshman.”
Tungol gets paid $100 per month as well as a ten percent commission off revenue from students buying roomsurf premium accounts.
Roomsurf pairs students based on shared preferences and commonalities. Students can log into their accounts through Facebook which takes their profile information and registers it onto their roomsurf account. Students take a survey which matches their results with other students. They can upgrade to a premium account which allows them to directly message students who they match.
Tungol said he’s now on a hiatus until the next incoming class, which is when he will create the class page for the graduating class of 2018 and answer questions that first year students have about living in Chico.
Roomsurf is a successful site because its easy to advertise to a large pool of students, he said. There is a good amount of people who actually utilize the services.
“Looking at my commission, I’d say it’s a good amount,” Tungol said.
Tungol said since starting his job last year, he’s made a commission of $200. The advantages for using Facebook pages to reach students is that it gives the business a foundation to advertise.
“How else would you penetrate that market,” he said. “It’s proven to be effective and they’ve been doing it for a few years.”
The Chico State Class of 2017 page was the first at Chico State administered by the businesses, Tungol said.
Textsurf is another website advertised to students where they can buy or sell textbooks. It compares prices from various book selling sites such as Amazon and AbeBooks. Textsurf only allows users to sell their books to ValoreBooks from competing websites.
Students also often use the class page to arrange for carpooling – an amenity that has implemented another branch of business marketing. Alex Lang, an administrator for the Chico State Class of 2018 page, said he’s created a Rideshare group for students this year. That page now has more than 200 members.
“Further, I have personally constructed a carpooling network of students totalling around 75,000 students in the United States,” Lang wrote in an email. “I am definitely looking forward to doing the same with Chico, though the group I have built for your school is small and growing fast.”
Tungol said he’s never met the co-founders of roomsurf but works a lot with co-founder, Justin Gaither, through email. Both websites are co-founded by Gaither and Dan Thibodeau, who graduated from the University of Miami, with bachelor degrees in business administration.
Christine Lee can be reached at: [email protected] or @leechris017 on Twitter.
