Wired on Friday/Carol Power: US students desperately seeking suitable roommates can avail of WebRoomz, an online firm that handles housing on behalf of a university

When the actor Tommy Lee Jones began his film career in 1970, he took a small role as Ryan O'Neal's Harvard room-mate in Love Story. According to the film's author, this relationship was loosely based on Tommy Lee Jones's own experience at Harvard where he roomed with the future US vice-president, Al Gore.

Mr Jones and Mr Gore have remained close friends for nearly 40 years. In some cases, college students are not so lucky with their choice of room-mate. Californian Michael Martin told me when he was accepted at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, he requested a quiet, single room but the college housing office randomly put him in a party dorm in a triple room, which meant three guys shared two rooms.

"I had room-mates I did not choose," he said. "And the room was as far away from my request as you could get."

As a freshman in college, most students have no choice over what rooms or room-mates they are assigned. If they are unhappy with their room-mates, they can usually only move if there are extenuating circumstances like a physical disability or sexual orientation.

To make life easier for both students and universities, a company called WebRoomz is offering to take on the booking of rooms and assigning of beds on behalf of a university.

Place Properties of Atlanta, a student housing developer, was looking for a way to attract students, retain them and alleviate burdens on staff, so it developed WebRoomz, where students can find room-mates online. This system is now being used by 12 universities in America. Before it went live on February 1st, 2002, WebRoomz was in pilot use at beta sites.

According to WebRoomz spokeswoman, Ms Jessica Harrison, the first college to go live was Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, which had previously been a commuter school with no dormitories on campus. It decided to build 1,058 beds and used WebRoomz to assign those beds to students.

The college never needed to employ housing staff to work on the arduous task of sending out applications in the mail, matching people to rooms and then having to deal with room-mate transfers.

WebRoomz is all done on the internet. If someone has a friend going to the same college, he can drop in the name and date of birth of the friend to request him as a room-mate. Otherwise, a student using a screen name to conceal his identity, can answer a questionnaire by typing in his personality profile, music preferences and work habits.

When profiles of other people looking for room-mates pop up, chosen by the computer's auto-match system, he can choose the one he thinks would be the best match. "What differentiates us from other matching systems is that we're in real time," Ms Harrison said.

The closest comparison, she said, was to an airline company where the public can book a flight online, select a seat and make a payment, without the threat of someone else taking that seat.

As many as 1,300 universities in the US are using computers to match up students. For example, Washington State University and Brown University use software from a company called Cbord Group of Ithaca, New York.

Ms Cindy Henry, who attended the University of New Hampshire in Exeter, New Hampshire, during 1983-87, said she made arrangements with a friend from high school to share a room with her. "This way we felt more comfortable knowing who we would live with," she said. She thinks the online concept "is a great idea especially if you don't know anybody at the school you're going to". She knew several people who didn't get on with their room-mates: one room-mate was bulimic; another person was a study hound and her room-mate a party animal! Often, room swapping goes on, unofficially.

"I think it's a great idea to find someone with similar interests as a room-mate," Mr Martin said. "The downside may be that people will end up choosing people who are just like them."

For example, online matching might eliminate the potential for a Jewish man from Brooklyn to share a room with an African-American man from Harlem who, in fact, might get on famously if given the chance.

But, for now, the universities and students using WebRoomz and other applications seem happy with their customised systems. A university pays a licence fee to WebRoomz based on the size of the school and the quantity of beds. "We break the fee down to a per-bed cost," Ms Harrison said.

It can cost a university $35,000 or more. Each university usually has a profile sheet, so girls share with girls and freshmen share with freshmen.

"The kids are empowered to make their own decisions and pick their own rooms," she said.

"The staff saves the cost of postage. The college picks up the cost of doing this but it is way less expensive than the old-fashioned way."