Thanks, but I'm not motivated either way by popularity. What all these kids at Yale are doing is misguided and a waste of their youth and skills. They could have stepped up to try to make a name for themselves by understanding more than just the technical bits. They could have spent just a little time to understand their non-technical landscape prior to showing off technically and crying to reddit Kony 2012-style.
They could have created a business around it. They could have attained departmental, IT, and/or administrative backing... along with all the improvements to access, support, and coverage that can bring.
What looks better? We got shut down right out of the gate for having no idea how to go about securing our venture or...
We brought our technical acumen to the right eyes and ears and sold ourselves to the king-makers in our little world.
This is a dress-rehearsal for investors. What these kids proved was they want to be more Pirate Bay than Facebook. More pejorative hacker than Hacker News hacker.
Bah. I had a similar idea at my university to provide instant-feedback course guides for all degree plans, class descriptions and online resources, etc.
The university went from "awful system implemented 20 years ago by Sungard" to "awful system implemented 1 year ago by Sungard". Don't pretend this YBB+ app, created by students, had any chance of being accepted by the university. Furthermore, it is a joke to claim futility and waste of talent for these men who built this website, created out of a real-world (first-world) problem and proven to serve user demands.
This is entirely wrong. Why would they wait to climb the through the bullshit bureaucracy when they can build something that helps all the students now? What they proved is that Yale's administration is woefully out of touch.
