There’s a new, college-student-only social network in town, and it works like so: You create a profile using your campus email. You add photos. You “friend” other kids at your school through a built-in directory.

Sound familiar?

Facebook has come full-circle: Its newest idea, “Facebook Campus,” just so happens to also be its oldest idea (from 2004). And they’re banking on it to revitalize a dwindling teen userbase. 

Take us back, kids? 

Last year, only about 3% of teens said that Facebook was their most-used social platform — on par with Pinterest and Twitter. That’s down from a peak of 42% in 2012. 

Facebook’s share of the pie has been eaten away by Snapchat (44%), Instagram (35%), and, more recently, TikTok (4%).

But Facebook Campus, which is in pilot-mode at 30 universities, could stop some of the bleeding and jumpstart the firm’s slowing revenue growth. 

Facebook Campus has its own separate section in FB’s portal 

If you don’t want your new classmates knowing about your Charlie Puth phase, just build a new, Campus-specific profile from scratch. 

On Campus, you can: 

• Curate a campus-only news feed 
• Launch dedicated study groups (which in reality means just a bunch of people asking, “Can someone send me the syllabus?”) 
• Avoid your Uncle Tommy’s conspiracy theory posts   

An added bonus: more data for marketers

The platform will also implore students to make more meaningful peer connections by entering information like their major, which classes they’re taking, and which dorm building they’re living in.

As The Verge notes, that data will better inform Facebook’s ad targeting for a coveted demographic.

Teens have been called one of the “most elusive and valuable” customer groups — largely because they wield tremendous purchasing power and haven’t yet fully formed their brand preferences.

Marketers may not be invited to join the Campus party, but they’ll certainly be lurking outside the windows.

Is it a bird? A plane? No, sorry, it’s just the Burger King drive-thru’s new floating kitchen.

With drive-thru visits up 26% this past April through June, several fast food chains are rethinking their approach.

Starting next year, Burger King, Starbucks, Shake Shack, and Chipotle are all giving their drive-thrus a tech makeover. That means more lanes, less sit-down space, and the possibility that your next Impossible Whopper might be grilled and delivered from above your car. 

Drive-thrus are all about minimalism now

Though drive-thus claim to be all about the ease, they aren’t getting any faster: drive-thru wait time has gone up 20 seconds YoY.

Some of the chains’ proposed drive-thru changes are on the back end:

• Taco Bell is axing complicated items, like the 7-Layer Burrito. 
• Starbucks is testing an AI tool called DeepBrew to streamline orders.

But the biggest change may be drive-thru menus

Companies like McDonald’s are infusing those hulking menu screens with responsive AI.

If the weather is freezing, for instance, you may see hot chocolate getting a top slot. Or if egg McMuffins are running low, they’ll disappear from the menu board entirely.

But others are ditching menus altogether. The way Taco Bell envisions it, a team of roving sales representatives will come to your car to take your order as soon as you pull up.

If getting to the drive-thru is still too much work, check out goPuff.

In 2013, 2 Drexel dudes (Rafael Ilishayev, Yakir Gola) decided it’d be dope to do on-campus delivery of weed needs like rolling papers, cheese puffs, and Visine… hence the name.

For extra laughs, delivery ran till 4:20am (LOL).

Last year, the company raised an eye-watering $750m (mostly from SoftBank), and it now delivers 3k items — from junk food to diapers to booze.

goPuff has already spent $150m of that sweet SoftBank money

And has 3.5k employees working at 200 mini-fulfillment centers serving 500 cities.

The biz model? It buys wholesale inventory from the likes of PepsiCo and Unilever and delivers goods to customers within 30 minutes for a $2 flat fee.

Lately it’s courting older, better-heeled consumers than it did in its college days. The average customer is between 25 and 34, and goPuff makes most of its money from high markups and the sale of product placements in the app.

Orders are up 4x since the pandemic started

Which smokes the ~$250m in revenue that goPuff pulled in during 2019. 

But the company still hasn’t turned a profit and — if losses sustained by more seasoned food delivery plays like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and GrubHub are any signal — it’ll be hard to get the numbers in the green. 

Founders Rafael and Yakir are undeterred. “It’s forever work,” they told Forbes. “Amazon is going on 25 years and is still improving.”

According to CNET, the dual-screen foldable Microsoft Duo smartphone is finally on its way.

Foldable. Now there’s a word you don’t see in tech much. That got us thinking — is this the first domino to fall, starting off a chain reaction of “-able” products? 

Here’s what The Hustle believes is next in “-able” trends:

Wave goodbye to the days of meticulously swabbing your keyboard with a Q-tip and say hello to spraying your MacBook down with a hose next time you get Cheeto dust on, well, everything.

We’re all sick of trying to find the one functioning outlet in the airport. How about plugging your laptop into a charger that’s stitched directly into the inseam of your pants? Sounds comfy.

Sometimes we just wanna crumple something up and toss it in the trash, sustainability be damned. Displays that you can smash at the end of every week? Uh, yeah, sign us up.  

This isn’t a tech thing, we just miss them. Oh, to be young again…

GIFs: @zzcrockett