A few hours to kill, homework to avoid and nothing to do - it's something known as boredom, and it affects everyone eventually. Justin Ho said he sympathizes with this and wants to help.
His creation, boredfriday.com, is a brand-new social-networking site at the University of Massachusetts that allows students to post announcements of upcoming events, sell and buy items and even look for peers with a common interest. It also counts down the time until each post is scheduled to happen.
Users can register with an official UMail account.
"The fundamental idea for boredfriday.com is to simply find other people who have nothing to do right now, this second and to make each other not bored, whether it be by playing a sport outside or video games inside," Ho said via e-mail. "I've had one girl try to look for running partners and someone else looking for someone to share fingernail paints with.
"In addition to alleviating boredom, I hope that some people even make friends out of this site," he said.
Users can search the site - which has been public for about a week - or create their own "ticket," something Ho describes as a request with a time limit.
Ho, a 23-year-old senior graduating this semester, likes to use the example of a student who wants to order a pizza, but wants someone to split it with. He said any student can create a ticket with a 15-minute duration that asks other readers if they want to split a pizza. The user would then include relevant information like toppings, and current deals and discounts, place it under the "Food" category, add his location to be more specific and click "Create Ticket."
"Your ticket will then appear on the front page for 15 minutes before it expires," Ho said, adding that the time limit can be extended. "With any luck, another bored and hungry student will see your ticket and respond to you that they're interested."
Students can also post information about classes, search for future roommates, ask for favors and offer professional help.
Ho said he came up with the idea in August and after consulting Paul Lam, a friend at the University of Rochester in New York, the two started exchanging ideas. They started fine-tuning the site, with Lam focusing on a marketing technique and Ho putting the site "to code."
After crafting the site, Ho, a computer science major from Andover, Mass., began placing fliers in certain dormitories in the Northeast Residential Area to see if students would be interested.
"Students have responded very well, and have further fueled my motivation for this site. Some already posted tickets and a whole bunch registered. I know for a fact some students have already sold goods and met up on the site, despite the fact it was only publicized in four buildings. Several students from Northeast even took the time to suggest changes, additions, even submit logo concepts," Ho said.
"I'm more than happy with the positive response I've received from Northeast. Using their feedback, I have made revisions to specific areas of the site over the weekend," he said. "Final touches should be revised by Tuesday, then I hope to go campus-wide within two weeks, and hopefully the campus will take well to it."
Domenic Poli can be reached at dpoli00@gmail.com.
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