I first heard about Graduate Junction through a review from An American Physics Student in England. Flip’s verdict was something of a mixed review, and he seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the site. However, the concept seemed intriguing, so I decided to check the site out for myself.
Can this site graduate from a cool concept to a useful tool for graduate students?
The goal of Graduate Junction is to provide an academic networking service along the lines of social networking sites like Facebook. Each user creates and maintains a personal profile page including name, institution, research summary, and a list of publications. Users can create and join groups, post links, publish notes, and send messages to other users. In fact, there is basically no functionality here that is not on Facebook. The main difference is what is removed: photos, pokes, applications, personal interests, the wall… anything that isn’t strictly professional. So if this site presents nothing entirely new, what value can it have?
