Imagine a social networking site
geared specifically toward connecting college students with their
on-campus academic and social communities. Sound familiar? Those are
Facebook's roots -- before the site ballooned into a worldwide
phenomenon with half a billion registered users. They're also the roots of Scoop, a forthcoming mobile social app.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt's personal venture capital investment vehicle, TomorrowVentures, has invested in the developers of Scoop, Trumpet Technologies, according to Venture Beat.
(By the way, Trumpet Technologies has an awesome slogan: "Stay Hungry.
Stay Foolish." Its company mission is listed as "mobile local search,"
probably the most popular social network-related technology today).
Trumpet Technologies put two college students in charge of
developing the product: Nick Simmons and Michael Akilian. According to
Simmons and Akilian, Scoop's ambition is to help people discover ad hoc
campus events like impromptu basketball games and raging frat keggers.
Simmons and Akilian want not only to list and promote events, they want
to leverage users' social connections with a recommendation engine,
actively engaging students in activities they'd enjoy.
"Imagine having a campus-wide conversation about what's going on.
That information is not all in one place today," Simmons told Venture
Beat.
The developers of Scoop realize they're cribbing from Facebook's
playbook, and plan to even use that site to spread word about Scoop.
"The existence of Facebook and its penetration through these campuses
will be a great aid to distribution," Akilian said.
What's most interesting about Scoop is its distribution model. Though Scoop does have a Web site,
it's uncertain as to how the service will use it, or if Scoop's main
focus will be on a mobile app. Venture Beat notes that "Simmons says the
choice of initial platform may change, at some point during the
upcoming school year, at selected campuses."
Quiet startups such as Scoop and Diaspora are sneaking onto the social scene with philosophy disparate from the Big Dogs: if they can attract people who are tired of privacy scuffles and commercialization,
perhaps there is a chance of reigniting the Internet revolution
Facebook once personified and breathe new life into social networking.