Meet UCC’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg

UCC grad Artemy Fedoseev may have created the 'next best thing' in social networking, Planbeam.com.

Barely turned 24, Fedoseev is the CEO of Planbeam.com, a website which based on its current progress to date has been tipped by tech pundits to become the next ‘big thing’ in social networking.

Fedoseev, originally from Klaipeda, Lithuania, came to Ireland in 2005, where he trained in computer science at UCC.

“My UCC experience was rather unusual,” Fedoseev explains.

“Simply gaining valuable knowledge wasn’t enough for me – I was always looking for ways to apply it so that it would bring value to other people,” the tech-boffin told StudentNews.ie.

“As a computer science student, I truly believe that the Internet allows us to solve old problems in new, unexpected ways.”

“For example, my fourth year project was a web site that allows students to ask questions anonymously during the lecture without interrupting the lecturer. It’s a new life style that we can adapt and benefit from. We should experiment with it. The sooner the better.” he explains.

Planbeam.com, according to the youthful looking Lithuanian is the best way to share and create the future you desire.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, where status updates become outdated as little as 4-5 hours after posting, Planbeam’s statuses increase in importance over time — essentially a paradigm shift for social networking.

An idea gets posted. People add to it. It becomes fuller. Over time, it can become a business plan – unique to the people who composed it, shaped by the experiences of participants. And that, says Fedoseev, is what’s drawing the masses to his site.

Planbeam’s traffic statistics are no less impressive than the concept itself: site use, predominantly drawn from direct visitors to the website, has multiplied remarkably since the network first went public on September 11th, 2011. Based on the site’s explosive growth in the first forty days of being online, Fedoseev says he’s optimistic that more of the same is around the corner.

“Long term, it is potentially the collaboration of 10s of millions of experiences and wisdom.” he says.

The UCC population accounts for the current majority of users of Planbeam — a fact Fedoseev says may draw inevitable comparisons with the 2003 inception and wildfire spread of Facebook, as it was then known, through Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, though the quietly spoken Fedoseev, whose says his friends call him the ‘gentle giant’, plays down any comparisons with the social media monolith.

“It’s a different thing entirely,” Fedoseev says, “but I’d certainly like to think we have potential to go in that direction”.

UCC students such as John Verling (21) (Geography and English class of 2012) use Planbeam to develop travel plans for their J1 trip to New York next summer.

“People chime in and contribute where is cheap for rent. Cutting travel expenses; places to see; people I can couch surf with if needed.”

“It creates a map by itself for me. I just come back and there is more information I can keep or dismiss” says James.

Ciara Kennedy (20) (Biochem class of 2013) uses Planbeam to figure out the best place to find cheap text books.

“There is a buy and sell capacity on Planbeam: someone comes on and says, ‘oh my friend did that course, ring him and ask how much his books are’. Then I come back and decide how useful that input was to me from 1-10.”

“I’ve also used Planbeam to find out cinema ratings, cheapest iPhone deals and where to find cheapest pints in Galway” she says.

An algorithm invented by Fedoseev rewards those who contribute most useful knowledge by exposing their posts more frequently to other high ranked planbeamers whose knowledge is agreed by moderators to be frequently dependable.

Users across Russia, the Isle of Mann, the United States, France and Australia have already visited Planbeam.com, many of whom are now registered as active users.

Click here to sign up and see for yourself today. Your future begins here.

Follow Barry on Twitter @BarryOBri.

By BARRY O'BRIEN

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Topics: Mark Zuckerberg , Social networks , UCC , UCC Ignite , UCC Students Union , University College Cork

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