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September 23, 2008, 03:15 PM ET
Cashing In on Class Notes
Class notes are valuable, and a new site is paying students to post them.
On Knetwit, users can create profiles and upload notes for “Koin,” the site’s currency, which is redeemable for water bottles, Frisbees, electronics, or cash. If another user downloads your notes, you score more Koin.
Benjamin Wald and Dean (Tyler) Jenks — two of the country’s “best young entrepreneurs,” according to Business Week — dropped out of Babson College to start the company. Their site moved out of beta testing last week and now features students’ uploaded notes, diagrams, and book-chapter outlines, as well as assignments (like “Is Gay Marriage Ever Morally Permissible,” for an ethics class at Florida Southern College) and quizzes (including several for a business-statistics class at the Georgia Institute of Technology).
Knetwit combines information sharing and social networking much like I Slept Through Class, a Web site started last year by a University of Dayton student. On that site, many students offer testimonials promoting the cash-for-notes business model: “I’ve already made a bunch of Amazon $$$,” writes Grant from Ball State University, “not to mention all my classmates love me for posting.”
Similar sites have faced allegations of copyright violations and cheating, but Knetwit’s operators say they “take copyright violation very seriously” and do not condone “plagiarism or cheating of any kind.” —Sara Lipka
Categories: Student-Life, Social-Networking
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