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NewsvineFor people who love Jack Johnson, hate Bush or wish they went to Hogwarts, Facebook offers a chance to meet up with others like them. But what about those who want to talk about having a toothache, remembering a first kiss or suffering from depression? The Experience Project, a two-week old networking Web site, allows Internet users to bond anonymously over just these kinds of shared experiences.
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“People don’t want to share negative things about themselves on Facebook or MySpace,” said Experience Project founder Armen Berjikly, a 2001 Stanford graduate. “They only share the shiny, happy side of themselves and market themselves to create what they think other people want to see. The Experience Project makes people feel like they have a place where they can be genuinely who they are in real life.”
Berjikly got the idea for the Experience Project after designing online health communities, which allow people with common illnesses to bond and receive support over the Internet. The anonymity of the groups allows users the freedom to discuss themselves, and he decided to expand on this concept with his new networking Web site.
The Experience Project is designed around common experiences posted by users, to which other users can either share their own experiences or simply remark “Me too,” “Not me” or “I’m planning to.” Users can browse by groups, stories, people, secrets or dreams, and the most popular groups include “I love Steven Colbert” and “I loved someone who didn’t love me.”
In a group about battling depression, a poster identified as “punkin” wrote, “I’ve had depression for many years now and have been in and out of its grasp. For about seven months now I’ve been squeezed by it everyday. I cannot remember the last time I felt happy or genuinely laughed.”
Another poster, “liesby,” wrote in a group about singing karaoke, “I’ve only sang karaoke once, and it was a couple of months ago during a trip to Japan. About 20 of us went, and I was determined to not get up there, but a friend and I decided to go together. She and I, plus two others, sang ‘Somebody to Love’ by Queen, and we were absolutely horrible, but it was still one of the best memories of the trip.”
A poster might confess to having HPV or suicidal thoughts, but his identity is protected by the website’s complete anonymity, a feature borrowed from the online health communities that Berjikly worked on before and something that he considers essential.
“Anonymity is one of the cornerstones of the online health community — people aren’t necessarily willing to put their names behind those kinds of experiences in a public forum,” he said.
But users of the Experience Project are also free to reveal their identities if they want to by privately messaging other posters with similar experiences.
“The people themselves can share information through private messaging, which is most definitely not illegal. It’s actually implicitly encouraged that people clump together. People who find themselves forming very deep connections can immediately start messaging each other,” Berjikly said.
Berjikly graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering. After quitting his full-time job, he spent a year developing the Web site with a small team. The project is self-funded for now, but he is currently looking to expand and gain investment backing.
Users of the site number in the thousands now, and with positive reviews by Wired, CNET and Venture Beat, Berjikly has hopes that the website will continue to expand.
“People are sharing all kinds of things about themselves, not just sad things,” he said. “It’s really resonating with people.”