A new social networking website is giving a few thousand students another reason to put off that 12-page research paper.
Almost 4,000 users have signed on to Qlique.com, a social networking rival of Facebook.com and MySpace.com and a website that provides live interaction capabilities among college students.
“With Qlique, the current static social utilities will be more obsolete than Lindsay Lohan’s driver’s license,” said Qlique spokeswoman Brenda Miller in a Sept. 10 Entermedia Corporation press release.
Qlique allows users to create a profile and talk through campus chats and instant messages, including “location-aware software” that helps students track friends and find events. It also has interactive games and compatibility quizzes.
“On the application, you can view who else is on close to you or around the country and start chatting with them,” said Adam Moyerman, the BU campus president of Qlique, in an email.
“There is also online gaming and many other activities, so [you’re] not just sitting around looking at updates of other people,” the School of Management senior added.
Entermedia Corp., the company that created Qlique, launched the site at 50 colleges, including BU, on Sept. 10.
The launch comes after two years of site development by the site’s creator and CEO, Andy Field.
“We can allow people to be more of who they are, and if you do it through humor, everyone feels good,” Field said in the press release. “Qlique combines the best parts of our online and real-world lives.”
BU Information Technology Executive Director Michael Krugman said in an email that social networking sites are useful for communication and collaboration on campuses, but they also pose certain risks.
“In numbers there’s strength, so having a network of contacts and connections can help us meet life’s many challenges,” Krugman said. “But remember that any technology that provides individuals new opportunities to foster and build relationships will necessarily provide commensurate opportunities for evildoers to exploit them.”
Moyerman admitted one of the main challenges for Qlique promoters will be marketing the site to students who are devoted Facebook and MySpace users, Moyerman said.
“If all my friends were on it then maybe [I would join], but other than that, no,” said College of Communication junior Laura Markey. “Social networking sites are a good tool to an extent, but they don’t replace an actual social network.”