The 1,436 freshman arriving for orientation have a new means of getting acquainted- a social networking site called Mindkin that was developed by four SCS graduate students.

Unlike Facebook and other conventional social networking sites, Mindkin is designed to connect people based on whether they like each other's thoughts, not their response to a questionnaire or the photos that they post. Ulas Bardak, an LTI grad student, said he and the other students began working on Mindkin two years ago because existing sites seemed superficial, particularly in the emphasis given to photos.

"What it boils down to is 'Looking for people who look nice,'" Bardak said of conventional sites. This had led, in turn, to such practices as photogenically challenged users posting photos of fake friends who look cool and presumably make the user look cool. That didn't make sense to Bardak and the others- grad students Betty Cheng and Vasco Calais Pedro of LTI and Jahanzeb Sherwani of the Computer Science Department. "We were looking for something to cut through all of that."

Mindkin's central feature is "Thought Stream," a screen on which ideas submitted by users scroll by. The ideas don't include the author's name, but users can identify those ideas they like or dislike; if a user likes enough ideas from the same author, that author's identity is eventually revealed so direct contact can be made.

Mindkin uses gaming theory to keep the site manageable. A system of credits forces users to be selective in identifying ideas they like or dislike, which makes it impossible for someone to simply "like" all of the ideas scrolling through Thought Stream.

Though Mindkin got a week-long public demonstration during the Employment Opportunities Conference in February, orientation offered the first chance to subject it to sustained use by a large group. And orientation counselors see Mindkin as a promising new way for first-years to make contact with each other.

The Mindkin braintrust has received a provisional patent on the concept and is looking for ways to commercialize it. The Olympus Project has adopted it as a PROBE and will feature the social networking site at its next "Show and Tell" for venture capitalists on Sept. 25 in the Collaborative Innovation Center.