“From Facebook to Foursquare, people are looking to their peers for the best source of information,” says Jack Tai, the site's CEO and co-founder. “Notesolution.com is the next natural progression for this concept of social learning.”
Tai, once a U of T undergraduate himself, developed the idea for the site with colleagues Kevin Wu and Jackey Li after contemplating how the daunting academic challenges of first and second year undergraduates could be lessened through the opportunities a Web 2.0 world creates. A social network of notes seemed to be the answer.
“We believe that experience is the best teacher,” says Kevin Wu, COO and co-founder. “So why not learn from the experiences of fellow students? Notesolution.com is a gateway for students to exchange study materials with each other, connecting and enhancing their university life.”
With over 10,000 users sharing over 12,000 notes after just one year of operation, the Notesolution.com team feels that now is the time for expansion. At the end of August, Notesolution 2.0 will be launching, which not only promises a more easily navigable user interface with a slick new look, style, and feel (think Twitter crossed with Apple), but also takes the service, previously only available to U of T students, Canada wide. The largest selection of university notes in the country is set to be made available to it, with over 20 Canadian universities slated to receive access to the service.
“Our goal is to have Notesolution.com used by all post secondary students nationally in September 2012,” says Tai. “Let's just say we are aiming to be Zynga for education, but we are taking it step by step.”
Zynga is the undisputed king of social network games, so to be its equivalent in any field is quite the aspiration. But if every Canadian university student knows someone who uses Notesolution.com as every Facebook user knows someone who plays FarmVille, then Tai and his team are well on their way.
With summer winding down and the fall session just two weeks away, check out Notesolution.com for an easy advantage on the upcoming academic year.
