A single Web site that lets you buy books, look for housing, find a roommate, rate professors and get in contact with other Sacramento State students seems too good to be true. But hornetstyle.com, a Web site dedicated to and created by Sac State students, does just that.
Current students Angel Penilla, a computer science major, and Sean Shaghaghi, a management information systems major, thought of this idea in 2004. Since then, Portal Methods LLC was developed as an Internet startup company based in Sacramento. A third co-owner, Robert Clayton, was also brought in to help with the creation of the Web site. After a year and a half of hard work, the Web site was launched.
The two seniors met in a fraternity and discovered their mutual interest in computers and programs and began realizing that Sac State was lacking a Web site that provided various services for their students.
Soon after, the idea of the site, which was initially written down on a napkin in a downtown coffee shop, became a business plan; hornetstyle.com was born.
The site features various services including: making friends, selling and buying books, searching for housing, searching for roommates, expressing opinions in blogs and forms, rating classes and professors and reviewing entertainment. The site lets you hook up with students in your class and even get the notes from a day you missed.
"I think it's kind of cool because you can make your own profile and stuff like MySpace but specifically for Sac State students," said Jessica McGuwin, a psychology major.
Melissa Horat, a senior majoring in psychology, has taken advantage of the services the site provides. "Right now, I am trying to sell one of my books from a class I took last semester," Horat said.
Horat has found the site quite functional already and said she would come to the site for other services including looking for a roommate or a house to rent.
"Instead of searching all over campus for the 'roommate wanted' signs, I would go to hornetstyle.com first," Horat said.
Penilla said this is the intention of the site. "Hopefully it will become popular and students will come to the site and every time they need something they'll come to the site," Penilla said.
However, the site is not complete. "It's a beta site," Penilla said. "These are introductory services for people to look around."
More services are set to be added, including providing fraternities, sororities and non-greek organizations with a portal to manage events, a tutor section, a job search section and buying and selling tickets of event."We want to organize the students' life and make it fun at the same time," Penilla said.
Horat has discovered a feature that keeps the site interesting. "Some other random things I like are the amount of pictures you can put on your site," she said, "Also, the pictures change so it is not one default picture all the time. It keeps it interesting."
The owners of Portal Methods are working to expand their business by providing the same type of site for every college campus in California. "Our first expansion is California State Universities and UC colleges," Penilla said.
Sites have already been created for all CSU campuses. Penilla said the company will now look into working on sites for other campuses.
The State Hornet 2007
LM, features writer
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