After the first run of the new Social Networking/Online Community seminar for 1st year business students at USF, we’re ready to do it again in the spring.  Curious minds can find the updated syllabus and detailed reading list for the course here.

The student project for the seminar was to propose a new business use of Social Networking/Online Community technology.  Here are the concepts they came up with:

RateMyCaf.com

A site for college students to rate cafeteria food items, and provide food suggestions.  Proposed pilot at USF (Bon Appetit), but with an eye towards a nationwide rollout.  Revenue from ads targeted to a college age demographic, and subscription fees from cafeteria food providers.  72 of 75 USF students surveyed said they would want to use this site.

Gimme-a-ride.com

A ridesharing site that would interface nicely with couchsurfing.com, a popular service for finding free places to stay.  Unlike the rideshare forum on Craigslist, gimme-a-ride.com would use profiles and user feedback to give potential ridesharers more confidence in who they’re catching a ride with.  Gimme-a-ride.com would also allow searches based on when and where a ride is desired.  Revenue from ads focused on discount travel services.  Longer term, the proposal is to develop forums with travel advice focused on the bargain domestic traveler.

iConnect

A proposal to add voice-driven messages, status updates, and ratings to the existing BMW iDrive car computer.  Provide social networking focused on location-based topics of interest to drivers, but within an exclusive community of BMW drivers.  Software would be added to all BMWs equipped with iDrive, but activation would require a subscription.

RecruitMe.com

A site focused on recruiting underappreciated ‘non-star’ high school players for NCAA competition.  The site would combine stats from MaxPreps.com, video hosting from YouTube, and Skype video chats with a social networking layer to create an easy-to-use site for athletes to specify their playing preferences, and for coaches to quickly search for talent they wouldn’t ordinarily be exposed to.  A premium service model based on how much material student-athletes load onto their profiles.