A Website Created by a Student for Students
FullDorm.com caters to greater Boston students
It’s that time of the year again. You’re scrambling to unload the semester’s textbooks, get rid of that MicroFridge, find a summer sublet, or catch a ride home.
Now there is a website that can help you with all of those needs, and more.
Last fall, Bentley College graduate student Jeff Weiss, dissatisfied with Bentley’s bare-bones classified ad website, set out to create a platform that would allow students to communicate about “the more tangible aspects of their lives.”
Weiss found a web developer to help implement his ideas and last August launched FullDorm.com at Bentley. Within two weeks, almost half of Bentley’s students were registered. In February, Boston University students gained access to Weiss’ website after the BU Student Union endorsed FullDorm. Since then, nine other area schools have joined: BC, Northeastern, MIT, Simmons, Berklee, Brandeis, Emerson, Suffolk, and UMass Boston. The website’s motto is “connecting the campus community, one school at a time.”
FullDorm offers students, faculty, and staff with valid college email addresses “a structured, secure, university-endorsed online platform,” according to the website, that allows users to buy and sell goods, share information, and discuss campus-related topics. Only when registered can students, faculty, and staff contact one another and post on the site.
FullDorm has several sections: classifieds, ride share, off-campus rentals (listings posted by local realtors), campus forum, dorm deal (local deals geared toward college students), the full dorm post (Boston news articles written by Boston students), and clip of the day (videos Weiss finds amusing or of interest to FullDorm readers).
The most popular feature is the classified section, which has nine categories: furniture, general, jobs, lost and found, real estate, textbooks, tickets, vehicles, and wanted. A recent day’s postings featured two Red Sox tickets for sale ($50), a sofa bed “like new!!” ($200), and a microwave ($15). Someone also advertised personal tutoring services ($30 an hour).
Weiss says that what distinguishes FullDorm from similar sites, such as Craigslist, is its privacy policy: “We don’t and won’t spam you or sell any of your personally identifiable information (name, email address, telephone number, credit card information) to anyone, ever.” Contact information is released only to others in your community, and only when both parties are signed up. Weiss says that the site sends out only one optional email a day, generally the next day’s dorm deal and content from the previous 24 hours.
Weiss, who graduated from Bentley last spring with a master’s in accounting, says that FullDorm is a work in progress. All of the site’s features are analyzed on an ongoing basis by student-run focus groups. “We’re working hard to create a website that students want to use,” Weiss says, “and we build FullDorm on constructive student feedback.”
Have you started your own company at BU? Let us know.
Erin Thibeau can be reached at ethibeau@bu.edu.
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