Facebook Shuts Down Campus — Will the Data Be Permanently Deleted?

Facebook is getting ready to shut down its Campus platform permanently. Users are recommended to download their data before it gets lost forever.

Back in 2020, Facebook tried appealing to younger users by launching an app dedicated to the college experience. Unfortunately for developers, Campus did not meet expectations, which is why the pilot project announced its decision to shut down.

Facebook Campus: Features and Details

According to Meta newsroom, Facebook Campus was designed to be a college-only space where students can share their similar interests, discover new opportunities and connect with other classmates.

It should be emphasized that Facebook Campus is a dedicated subsection from the main Facebook app, however, it shares almost the same features. So users had to set up new Campus-specific profiles, groups, posts, and events.

Sources say the Campus key features are as follows:

• Campus-only News Feed: this is a specialized interface that students could use to create study groups, plan virtual concerts or ask for advice from seniors.
• Campus directory: this is a tool that makes it simple for users to find classmates by class, major, year and more.
• New ways to chat: real-time chatrooms that users can organize according to dorm, clubs or any other groups.

Note that Campus also offers other Facebook services like Watch, Dating, Gaming and News. Because of these similarities, some users complain Campus almost felt no different from Facebook.

Facebook Campus Usage Details

According to TechCrunch, the first Campus pilot program only included 30 U.S. schools, starting with Harvard University. Then it expanded to 60 schools by 2021. Now this year, the program reached up to 204 schools in total.

Note, however, that the number of schools does not accurately reflect the active participation of the students themselves.

The Verge said that internal memos leaked from the company reveal a 13% decline with Facebook youth users in 2019. The number is speculated to continue declining, which implies youths are still losing interest in using Facebook.

The decline in the number of users eventually prompted Campus to finally end its services sometime on March 10.

Will FB Campus Data be Deleted?

Leah Luchetti, a spokesperson for Facebook, told The Verge, "We've decided to end our pilot of Facebook Campus." Luchetti further explained, "We learned a lot about the best ways to support college students, and one of the most effective tools to help bring them together is Facebook Groups."

Social media consultant Matt Navarra tweeted the details of this shutdown announcement. His post included a screenshot of the in-app notification sent to other Campus users.

The post said, "Campus will no longer be available after March 10." It also emphasized that "Campus profiles, groups, posts, and other data will be deleted." The post mentioned there might be an online tool that can help Campus users download their data, but sources did not elaborate on the topic.