Ex-Microsoft exec kickstarts new social network for college kids

Creating a social network for college kids might seem like a foolhardy pursuit given Facebook’s historic roots in that market. And Jonathan Lazarus says that his new upstart, a social networking site called CollegeBrain, won’t compete with the social networking powerhouse.

“We are very complementary with Facebook” said Lazarus, who retired from his vice president role at Microsoft in 1996. “I am not stupid enough to compete with Facebook.”

CollegeBrain just landed $600,000 in startup capital, adding to the $115,000 that Lazarus and co-founder Ron Craswell previously injected into the young company. Among the backers is Nat Goldhaber of Claremont Creek Ventures, an experienced Silicon Valley venture capitalist who Lazarus says he has known for about 20 years.

Lazarus tells GeekWire that they plan to cap the financing at the current levels, noting that he doesn’t want “to take any more money.” The project is “very low key,” with a test version of the site to debut in the next 90 days.

Asked how the company plans to differentiate from other social networking sites used by college kids, Lazarus says it is a matter of focus.

“(CollegeBrain) is a very broad look at everything from the campus to what classes and instructors are like,” Lazarus tells GeekWire. “It is allowing them to share their overall experiences, what surprised them, what they expected, what changed over their four years.”

That differs from Facebook, which he says is more of an “unstructured conversation” about a wide array of topics. CollegeBrain, on the other hand, offers a way for kids to learn what the school is like from other people and how it compares to their own experience.

Lazarus declined to say how the company plans to make money, but he did note that college tuitions are a significant expense for most families.

“There are a lot of passionate people spending a lot of money. You don’t have any kids in college yet, but it is a non trivial decision and expense,” he said. “And it is very complicated right now.”

Lazarus is a well known technology executive, having previously worked at Ziff Davis and ABC.

Craswell, meanwhile, is the former vice president of engineering at M:Metrics and a former engineering director at Google. He also previously worked under Lazarus at Kiha Software. In addition to Craswell and Lazarus, the company’s chief scientist is Mitch Eggers, who is working as an advisor to the company.  Eggers is the chief scientist at GMI and previously worked at iSecuritas. [Editor’s note: Post updated to reflect Eggers’ postion at the company].

The company employs less than 10 people, and Lazarus says that’s where “we will stay for a long time.”

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Social Networking Turns Scary

By Nick Clayton

It may just be coincidence, but recently in some of the places where social media enthusiasm is loudest, there has been a sound of caution, almost nervousness. Maybe having too many relationships is becoming creepy or simply overwhelming.

On ReadWrite, for instance, Scott M. Fulton III writes under the heading, “Analysis: Are We Ready to Become Friends With Things?”

He reports how Marc Benioff, CEO of cloud CRM business, salesforce.com, sees the future of a drink dispenser:

“I just put my iPhone in front of the Coke machine, my iPhone knows where it is, it’s got geolocation! It just gave me a point for being in front of this Coke machine, a loyalty point! It knows it’s got these six products. If I choose ‘collateral’ for any of these six products at this time, I get another loyalty point. I’m connected to Coca-Cola.”

The wonders only begin from this point. “Then Coca-Cola updates my Facebook page. It says, ‘Ah, Marc likes Diet Coke!’ It’s right here, and it starts to work with me. It starts to have a relationship with me. We can bring the offline world online. We can have more customer intimacy.”

Mr. Fulton describes how other businesses such as Disney and Gatorade are using software from salesforce.com to enable them to both collect and respond in real time to customer data collected through social networks and geographical position.

We have to start wondering, at what point will this leveraging of social media for the purposes of data mining and customer engagement drive back the social media revolution and force millions upon millions of new users to dial down the volume? Knowing that they could trigger a tidal wave at any moment, will people be more careful about what they share, or will they simply share less? And if they do, will all the pop dispensers and cash registers and wi-fi routers and automobiles of the world, notice or care? Or will they just talk amongst themselves?

Mashable, another site for social media enthusiasts, describes Ford’s plug-in hybrid concept car, the Evos. Charlie White reports “The Social-Networking Vehicle Of The Future” is, “so smart, it can socially network with its driver’s friends and recommend roads and routes that might be quickest or the most fun to drive.”

But even Mashable has to admit: “Some drivers might find all that computerized attention and personalized assistance a bit creepy at first.”

TechCrunch also understands why Google could worry some people. M.G. Siegler reports under the heading: “Google Quietly Rolls Out The Chrome Extension To Bring +1 To The Entire Web.”

As the tagline indicates, the Google +1 Button extension allows you to “+1 a web page, anywhere you go on the web”. That’s important. You no longer have to rely on a site to implement the +1 Button, you can invoke the functionality through your browser. Imagine if Facebook made their own browser and offered an extension to “Like” any page on the web through it…

Right now, the +1 Button just shares content you like on the web. But eventually, the plan is to look at this data as a way to affect Google Search itself potentially. That’s huge. The button also is starting to play a role in how Google serves up advertising to you. Again, huge—though these concepts may make people wary of such a button.

Of course, the biggest initial fear is likely to be over privacy, especially as this extension sends to Google all the pages and URLs visited by the user, not just the ones that have been given a +1. Fears of a backlash may be why Google has launched this new service so stealthily and been careful to publish a page describing basically how data is just collected for debugging purposes: “How the +1 button respects your privacy.”

Whatever the motives behind these developments, there do seem to be an increasing number of unexpected voices raising fears that maybe the world is becoming a little too sociable.

ReadWriteWeb: Analysis: Are We Ready to Become Friends With Things?

Mashable: The Social-Networking Vehicle Of The Future

TechCrunch: Google Quietly Rolls Out The Chrome Extension To Bring +1 To The Entire Web

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