Academia.edu -- Facebook for Higher Education?

A posting to the College Libraries Listserv this week introduced www.academia.edu, a site for members of colleges and universities to post information about themselves, their studies and research interests.

Users can affiliate themselves with an institution and department, which displays in “tree” form.

Over 15,000 members have joined in the past two months, including such noted scholars as:

• Richard Dawkins – http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardDawkins
• Stephen Hawking – http://cambridge.academia.edu/StephenHawking
• Paul Krugman – http://princeton.academia.edu/PaulKrugman
• Noam Chomsky – http://mit.academia.edu/NoamChomsky
• Steven Pinker – http://harvard.academia.edu/StevenPinker