Andrew Bank and Michael Gursha were fed up with how sites like Facebook and LinkedIn divided the Web into strictly professional or social spaces. Now the two are trying to bridge the gap between the sites.

‘Facebook is overly social, and LinkedIn is overly professional,’ said Bank, a senior television, radio and film major. ‘We wanted to combine the two and get others to think differently about what others have to say about you.’

Bank and Gursha created VouchBoard, an online site where users can make free accounts and use their ‘boards,’ similar to Facebook walls, to send and receive ‘vouches.’ Vouches are testimonies written by anyone from friends and family to professors and employers about a person’s creativity, work ethic, personality and more. Users can create categories on their boards and organize vouches in any way they choose, Bank said.

VouchBoard will launch Monday, though people can already make accounts on the website. There are currently more than 500 users testing the site and providing the team with feedback, Bank said.

VouchBoard was created in four months with help from developers hired to design the website. Bank and Gursha said they wanted students and instructors to sign up for VouchBoard to get a wide range of voices speaking for one another’s talents and skills.

The two hope VouchBoard can grow and be used in the professional world for employers to get a better idea of potential employees’ personalities, Gursha said.

VouchBoard provides an alternative to LinkedIn recommendations, which can be frustrating because of their formal nature, said Gursha, a 2010 alumnus of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The team took that aspect of LinkedIn and expanded it with VouchBoard to fit the need for more personal, informal recommendations, he said.

Users can search for ‘vouchmates,’ people they may want to vouch for or who want to vouch for them. A receiver of a vouch must accept it before it can appear on his or her board, which ensures positive and accurate testimonies, Bank said. Users can send out vouches they receive to Facebook and LinkedIn accounts as well.

‘VouchBoard builds up a person’s good reputation through the eyes of those who know them best,’ Gursha said.

Bank and Gursha want to turn VouchBoard into a needed service connecting the social and the professional aspects of Web communication, Bank said.

During Spring Break, the team will travel to Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest, the annual music, film and interactive festival that showcases the newest and most creative media and technologies. They will join a Newhouse group and Sean Branagan, director of Newhouse’s Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, to spread the word about VouchBoard, Branagan said.

‘The future of digital media is played out at South by Southwest,’ Branagan said. ‘It’s the perfect place for natural collisions between creative entrepreneurs and professionals.’

Branagan helped with the development of VouchBoard and said he believes South by Southwest is a prime opportunity for the website to gain more exposure and for the creators to connect with professionals and possible investors.

Branagan said he thinks an ‘A-team’ like Bank and Gursha can propel an idea like VouchBoard to success.

Tyler Gildin, a senior television, radio and film major, said he enjoys the freshness of VouchBoard’s positivity.

‘In a world where people are constantly being bashed online, VouchBoard differentiates itself because it’s one site where only positive things are displayed,’ Gildin said.

vlpallad@syr.edu

Published on March 7, 2011 at 12:00 pm