ummmmm, with the shooting incidents we've had at colleges and high schools, you may want to rename this. Sounds good otherwise.

I was thinking the same thing and I consider it a working title

How will you handle privacy? Posting a request for a room mate on a board in a dorm hallway is one thing - making it available on the web is another. Do you see any potential problems with that?

I would also be interested to know the benefits that you see in providing local college info to all colleges. You mentioned housing, employment, exchange, and campus life. Why would students be interested in these areas of interest at colleges they are not attending?

Those are great questions..

1) I want users to have control over their privacy. When making a post, they can choose to hide their contact info. On the flip side, users have the freedom to disclose their email, cell #, etc. in their posts if they wish.

2) Some cities, like Pittsburgh, PA and Newark, NJ, have multiple colleges in a small radius. I think students in those and similar areas would find value in posting/browsing on other colleges.

Plus facebook has the ability to limit the amount of people to certain domains like arizona.edu for univ of arizona specific info.

Most schools I know have sited which provide this service, but why not.

Most schools all ready have online forum boards like this.

this already exist in many forms. as said from a lot of existing college/univ sites, facebook, craigslist, school newspapers... i dont see an opening in the market

Most schools are having this on their site or have joined a site like this*.

*mostly with some other functions as well (creating online projects for certain courses and things like that)

not original enough. how would you be different from the sites doing similar things that are already in existence?

Yeah, I like the concept in the same respect that i like cork and thumbtacks. It will be an effective and useful resource, but unless I am missing it, there is zero novelty or innovation here. You just can't dress craigslist in sexy enough clothes to convince someone that it isn't really craigslist. If I could make a more constructive point, I think that the functionality of your idea is worth noting. But the idea as it stands is worth nothing. Instead of building a highly networked, national repository of classified ads revolving around campus life. I would instead invest my energy into building a simple but elegant stand alone application that could be deployed on an individual campus level and hosted locally that would give the particular school every bit of your intended functionality while diminishing the prospect of spam and security concerns. It could be made available only through the schools (somewhat) secure network with easier to deploy administrative control. Create solid buzz and watch it gain adoption organically. If internetworkablility is for some reason paramount it could be offered through a portal environment still only accessible from inside each individual network. Schools could join the network or operate as separatists, thier call. Enable access to the source code, or don't it is your choice. Build and deploy plug-ins for added functionality based on individual demand and enjoy the fruits of your targeted labors.

To recap: elegant in simplicity, standalone app, diminished security risk, well supported, optional internetworkablity at a premium, strong suite of plugins, strong administrative control, national branding, 4182 universities in US alone, spend money well.