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"Univillage, which launched officially on August 16th, is the first social networking site aimed squarely at UK university (equivalent of US college) students - pretty clearly, it's trying to be the UK's Facebook.  The service is available to those with a ac.uk email address, but you can sign up with any address for the first few weeks.  The reason for that - and the choice of launch date - is that English high school students received their results last week.  New students can now network well in advance of Fresher's Week, where they would normally meet for the first time.  The site was co-founded by Henry Yates and Andrew Needham, and Univillage's non-exec director is Brent Hoberman, founder of the travel site lastminute.com.\nI took it for a spin last week, and it's an impressive platform.  There are profile pages, university-based networks, the ability to add friends, groups, forums, blogging, events, photo uploading and integration with Yahoo Messenger.  You can also customize your profile by editing the color scheme and fonts or grabbing a ready-made skin from the gallery (unlike with MySpace layouts, there's no ability to add custom css).  A calendar and address book are also included.  \n\nBut perhaps one of the smartest moves has been to include a music section - Univillage has partnered with Universal, EMI, Warner, SonyBMG and some independent labels to provide music, concert information and tickets from artists like Coldplay, Gorillaz and Kylie Minogue.  The setup is the same as MySpace Music and recently-launched Bebo Bands - musicians have their own profile pages, and you can grab any track to add to your own page.  Tracks can also be bought straight from the Flash player.  To complete the feature set, Univillage also supports video uploading, and just like rival Bebo, the feature is powered by VideoEgg.  Alernatively, you can post videos from YouTube or Google Video.  \nIt seems this idea could get real traction - the company claims that every UK university student has been notified of the launch, which could lead to massive uptake.  The UK lacks a direct Facebook equivalent, but Bebo, a cross between MySpace and Facebook, is probably Univillage's strongest rival.  MySpace also has good uptake, and the ability to find friends based on schools.  Nonetheless, I think Univillage is hitting the university demographic much harder than its rivals - it seems inevitable that it will be a big hit.\n\nAttention Univillage Members!\nTo visit Mashable's Univillage profile (and add Mashable to your Univillage friends!), CLICK HERE!  You'll have to be logged into Univillage for the link to work properly.  Alternatively, search Univillage for \"Mashable\" and add me to your friends.  Thanks!\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/08/21/univillage-launches-uk-facebook/>