The Idea

pal·o·p·ia (păl'o'pē'ā)
n.

1. An online social universe that connects your digital life (full of photos, blogs, messages, music, groups, communities, and devices) with that of your friends'.
2. A social networking portal that works with its student-aged members to understand their needs and wants in order to offer a better overall experience.
3. An internet startup that is going to redefine how the world communicates, connects, socializes, and shares digital and offline experiences and memories.

Palopia is a social networking portal made by real students for real students with real lives. It's not just about profiles and comments anymore. We've spent long days and nights figuring out what needs to be better to make our online lives easier, more rewarding, and more enjoyable. We built our network from the ground up--understanding what our friends wanted and what their friends wanted, and their friends' and so on.

We're watching, inventing, and building. Palopia puts the member first and then builds better features around them and their social circle. Here are some of the features we're most excited about using ourselves:

• Perfect personal profiles - Professionally designed pages and comments templates that truly represent your personality, the profiles are designed to make it easier to do more with your friends.
• Photo Sharing - A super-simple way to share all of your photos with your friends, you even can view all of your friends' recently posted photos all on one page.
• All-In-One Messaging - Many email addresses (with POP or IMAP access) all through one system, simply click on the tab of whichever inbox you want and keeping up with emails and Palopia messages and bulletins is a snap.
• Better Blogging - You can easily view all of your friends' and favorite bloggers' new entries easily all on one page--in addition to making your very own blog.
• Connected Calendar - You're busy, and so are your friends. Your life revolves around events, appointments, and to-do's. You can view your friends' calendars, invite them, and coordinate events. You can link any event with anything else on Palopia, photos from a party, blog entry from the interview, the possibilities are endless.
• Groups and Communities - Ok, so others built the "social network" full of profiles and webrings, where's the social or network side to that? We built groups with features like their own calendar, forum, photo galleries, blogs, and much more. You can even create pages of your own with what ever you want on them. Communities act as groups for groups, build a group that inhabits your school's unique community or leave it open to everyone on Palopia.