Spring Break
The Daily OrangeParty planner: new networking site organizes social events on college campuses
By Stephanie Musat
Posted: 9/5/08, 12:14 AM EST Section: Feature
Only college students with a valid .edu e-mail address can register to view the site.
When students log on, they are grouped by their college campus and are unable to view any other college homepages.
The Web site has approximately 1,600 members across more than 115 college campuses. Syracuse University currently has 27 members.
Rodrigues attributes the rapid growth of the Web site to the simplistic foundation off of which the site was built.
Unlike the platform on which Facebook operates, additional applications cannot be added to personal pages. This keeps the Web site clean and easy to navigate.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Time Magazine that the site grew in popularity due to the expansion of its audience as well as Facebook Platform, which launched in May 2007.
Platform allows outside developers to create applications to put on Facebook. More than 5,000 applications are on Facebook with 100 new applications added per day.
Jonathan Hsu, creator of the fourth-most popular application, SuperPoke!, said he and his friends were bored with the standard Facebook applications, so they created one of their own. Hsu recalled sitting around with the group brainstorming ideas for Facebook when they thought of an application that would allow users to do more than just poke would be popular.
"It's boring to get poked, but it's funny to get b*tch slapped or get a sheep thrown at you. We hacked all weekend, and that's how SuperPoke! was born," Hsu said.
By downloading Platform capabilities from Facebook, anyone can create applications accessible to all Facebook users.
Since Facebook users and outside corporations can create applications, the Facebook homepage is flooded with thousands of applications, something that Rodrigues wanted to prevent.
"Sites like Facebook are really cluttered with extra stuff. For this Web site, our core principle is to keep it very simple," Rodrigues said.
TJ Ross, a junior management major agrees with the simplistic adage because applications on sites like Facebook make the pages look "tacky."
When students log on, they are grouped by their college campus and are unable to view any other college homepages.
The Web site has approximately 1,600 members across more than 115 college campuses. Syracuse University currently has 27 members.
Rodrigues attributes the rapid growth of the Web site to the simplistic foundation off of which the site was built.
Unlike the platform on which Facebook operates, additional applications cannot be added to personal pages. This keeps the Web site clean and easy to navigate.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Time Magazine that the site grew in popularity due to the expansion of its audience as well as Facebook Platform, which launched in May 2007.
Platform allows outside developers to create applications to put on Facebook. More than 5,000 applications are on Facebook with 100 new applications added per day.
Jonathan Hsu, creator of the fourth-most popular application, SuperPoke!, said he and his friends were bored with the standard Facebook applications, so they created one of their own. Hsu recalled sitting around with the group brainstorming ideas for Facebook when they thought of an application that would allow users to do more than just poke would be popular.
"It's boring to get poked, but it's funny to get b*tch slapped or get a sheep thrown at you. We hacked all weekend, and that's how SuperPoke! was born," Hsu said.
By downloading Platform capabilities from Facebook, anyone can create applications accessible to all Facebook users.
Since Facebook users and outside corporations can create applications, the Facebook homepage is flooded with thousands of applications, something that Rodrigues wanted to prevent.
"Sites like Facebook are really cluttered with extra stuff. For this Web site, our core principle is to keep it very simple," Rodrigues said.
TJ Ross, a junior management major agrees with the simplistic adage because applications on sites like Facebook make the pages look "tacky."
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