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
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Jay Rodrigues got some odd requests on his Facebook account when he graduated high school. Once he logged onto his Facebook, he found a new user vying for his virtual friendship - nothing out of the ordinary. But when he clicked on the link to see who it was, he was surprised and slightly freaked out by who was on the other end.
One of his high school teachers had petitioned to be his cyber-friend, opening his personal life (and the pictures from the previous weekend) to someone from whom he felt he deserved a sense of anonymity.
So he made his own social site, only available to college students.
"I wanted to create a Web site which would allows college students to socialize in a secure area where you don't necessarily have to think about who will see your photos, how you express yourself," he said. "You create a profile to express yourself in your college world, not for the rest of the world."
The idea for Dormnoise.com started in Rodrigues's freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. The Web site officially launched this August, in his sophomore year at the university's Wharton School of Business.
Dormnoise.com is intended to be a social site where groups on college campuses post events on an interactive calendar that can be added to the user's personal homepage.
The calendar displays concert times, parties and "is intended to consolidate student social lives," he said.
"At least at Penn, the social life is very disorganized," he said. "Here, student groups are huge and are center of social life. People crumple up flyers and throw them away; mass e-mails are confusing. Parties would trickle down by word of mouth but I thought was missing sometimes."
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