First there was Friendster. Then there was Thefacebook. Now, there is DormInform.
Jason Townes French '08 launched the latest addition to the trend of social networking sites Tuesday. His site, DormInform.com, is a free online community intended to facilitate dorm interaction and social events.
The site allows users to announce unofficial hall events to other users in their dorms, or to the entire school community. Users are able to create a virtual dorm by uploading photographs of their rooms, and to participate in forums unique to their dorms. DormInform also keeps a live ranking of dorms across campuses based on participation.
French said he came up with the idea at the end of the Fall semester, and continued working on it throughout winter break and the beginning of this semester.
"It was the end of last semester after finals period. There was still a trickle of people around in Keeney, but I didn't know who they were, and I started thinking if there was a way to better connect with people who were living around me, just to know who was going to be around, and so on," he said.
The idea soon extended to include unofficial social events. "Eventually I started thinking it would be a good idea to post announcements for parties and other events on the site. For example, if you were having a movie screening in your room and you wanted people to know about it, you could just post it online," French said.
After refining his idea for two weeks, French said he spent "four hours a day, for five days a week, for three weeks" in the CIT writing the programming code for the site. To assist him, he enlisted the help of Young Hwan Kim '08, who helped with the programming, and Paul Monnes '08, who designed the graphics and layout.
Kim credited CS 9: "Building a Web Application" as another source of inspiration for DormInform. "Jason and I met in that class. We had to design an eBay site for charities together. The class is still meeting and working on it even though we're not doing it for credit anymore. We basically learned all we needed to know to create DormInform from that class," he said.
"I have a background with software programming, but this is my first stab at a full-blown web application. I learned most of the database languages ... from CS 9," French added.
French dismissed the inevitable comparisons to Thefacebook.com by emphasizing the different functions of DormInform. "I hope people don't see this as a Facebook knock-off. It's supposed to be more oriented for the dorm, connecting people within the same living area, while Thefacebook connects you with people across campus and in other schools. Thefacebook does its job well, but we're not in direct competition with them or anything," he said.
The site has had a modest beginning. As of Thursday, 13 users from Brown had registered, and it was available to 11 schools across the nation.
Nevertheless, French noted initial signs were encouraging. "Obviously, it's still in an early stage, but we've started to get some attention, and just yesterday we received some requests from other schools to be added. I'm confident it'll start to spread by word of mouth," he said.
French said he had modest ambitions for DormInform - his main aim is to foster social interaction and not to reap financial gain, he said.
"I don't have any hopes for it in terms of financial profit or widespread popularity. I just hope it'll be used here at Brown to create a sense of dorm camaraderie. Even if just the people in Keeney were on it, I'd be happy," he said.
His co-creators expressed greater hopes for the site. "I think it should be pretty successful. It connects people in a way that Thefacebook doesn't, because it's a lot more grounded in the dorms and makes use of actual social events. I think people will have fun with the dorm rankings function too. (The site) will be useful for people who don't own cell phones and aren't very contactable," said Monnes.
One student expressed some interest in the site. "I don't know if people will actually use it, but I'll definitely check it out," said Bo Tao '08.
