FitFinder, website that helps college-goers find love in book stacks, taken down

LONDON - A student dating website that received four million hits in its first month has been deemed offensive by Universities who have forced it to be shut down.

The FitFinder combines Twitter and a classified ads column, allowing students to exchange comments and messages in libraries and social spaces. But university authorities have claimed that it is a source of distraction and several posts were even offensive to women.

More than 1,000 students signed an online petition, in under 2 hours, to save the website.

Rich Martell, 21, founder of the website was in talks with entrepreneurs to extend the website to follow the Facebook model, but talks of shutting it down have dashed his hopes.

“I’m wanting to take it forward but I want to clear things up and comply with the unis,” The Times quoted him as saying.

“People want it. It’s only a social networking site.”

The site had been closed down earlier but restarted following retaliation from the students who said it violated their freedom of expression.

Last week the London School of Economics told The Times, “We’re against the site and we’ve asked people not to use it. First of all we had some complaints from students who found it insulting and secondly if you’re in the library you’re there to study.” (ANI)