As parents and fam ily members increase their presence on Facebook, N.C. State alumnus Nick Vitale is launching a social network ing site that will let college students communicate pri vately and anonymously.
Through his site, called Fratire, Vitale vows to “pri vately make your life public” by allowing users to share pri vate information to the world without consequences. It al lows users to post their most scandalous stories anony mously. They can track the popularity of their story by the number of “likes” it re ceives.
“Fratire is a platform for college students to present their point-of-view stories of interesting or shocking nights out,” Vitale said.
Despite his site’s name, Vi tale was not a member of a fraternity during his time at N.C. State. He does, however, see fraternity members as a key demographic for Fratire. The New York Times reporter Warren St. John coined the name Fratire as a combina tion of the words “fraternity” and “satire” as a reference to male-centric college stories of alcohol and sex.
On Friday, the beta test for the site will be made available to N.C. State students. The only feature available during this beta test will be the “all-time stories” page, a feature that will allow users to view the most “liked” stories.
During the next few months, in addition to the “all-time stories” page, Frat ire will offer other colleges their own story feeds. This will allow students to search for stories by college. The site is launching at N.C. State but will be available to ECU and Meredith students as well.
Fratire will also allow us ers to tag places and activi ties so others can search for taglines and reviews for bars and restaurants. This allows users to see what stories took place at their favorite bar or at a new place they are still on the fence about.
“They can figure out or ganically—as opposed to the biased reviews online of extremely dissatisfied cus tomers—what goes on at a certain bar or restaurant,” Vitale said.
Users can subscribe to cer tain taglines and receive up dates when a story is posted with that tagline.
The website will eventu ally include a “private circle” page. This will allow users to add close friends to view their stories. This is the only section of the site where an other user can see who wrote a story.
“On Facebook you share in formation, and it’s out there for everyone to see,” Vitale said. “Fratire is the opposite of that. Users are sharing conf idential information with other college students anonymously.”
As social networking be comes more popular, there are more ways for colleges and employers to see what in dividuals are posting. One of the main attractions to a site like Fratire is the anonymity. Once a user posts a story, no potential employer can trace it back to the user.
But Vitale said not ev ery story submitted will be posted to Fratire. If a story violates the site’s privacy con ditions or does not meet the requirements for entertain ment, it will not run.
“When you post to Fratire you aren’t posting directly to the website,” Vitale said. “It’s submitted to Fratire and goes through an algorithm and makes sure no names are mentioned in the story, and then an individual actually reads the story to make sure it’s interesting, shocking or funny in some way.”
Vitale said this function also provides a safety net to prevent cyber bullying.
“It’s a site that you can go to read and write about you and your peers and not have to worry about that informa tion being on the Internet,” Vitale said.
Vitale said he hopes to complete his beta testing and have the site fully operational within the next three months.
