UCF student invents new way of social networking

John Bros was hiking in Yellowstone National Park while on family vacation when he met a woman.

"She was really nice, and once we left from the top she was like, ‘Oh we'll find each other on Facebook,' and she gave me her name," Bros said. "Unfortunately, she has a really generic name and I wasn't able to find her."

Bros, a junior education major, found himself wondering if the mystery woman could have identified herself as something more unique.

And so, Bros thought of GreetSheet.com.

GreetSheet.com is a social networking website that allows users to incorporate all of their different social networking profiles and contact information into one profile. Users choose a GS Code, similar to a username, that identifies themselves.

They are also given a code that can be represented by a Share Square, which is similar to a QR code that links directly to the user's GreetSheet.com.

The idea of GreetSheet.com is to create a kind of Rolodex that allows users to keep track of their connections across different social networking platforms.

Users can decide what material to make public and what to keep private.

Once logged in, users can enter a person's GS code and add it to their list of contacts, where the information for that person can be found, including their Facebook profile, phone number and email address.

The share square can be stored on a smartphone and can be scanned by other smartphones. Once scanned, the contact information of that person is downloaded.

Many new social networking websites are designed to appeal to more niche groups or serve different purposes than those of Facebook and Twitter.

GreetSheet.com incorporates, rather than competes with, 26 different social networking platforms, from Facebook to Xbox gamertags.

"I'm not here to compete with anybody," Bros said. "The purpose of this is not to bump anybody out of the road but to help them all move better."

Bros had to decide whether or not to invest the time and money to make his idea into a reality.

"I never had any interest in building websites or making anything like this," Bros said. "It's just that I had an idea and felt that it was something that hasn't been done, and it's something that can help people network and communicate in a way that has never been done before."

He decided if something else came along similar to his idea, he did not want to regret it.

"I was like, well, you can be the one that is like, ‘Oh, I thought of this first,' or you can actually be the one that created it, protected yourself and now are the owner of this thing that benefits tons of people," Bros said.

Bros hired someone to program the website and after months of planning, designing, spending and talking with lawyers, GreetSheet.com went live in December.

Keith Patterson, a senior mechanical engineering major at the University of Florida, has been using GreetSheet.com for about a month and has about 30 contacts.

"I think it's a brilliant idea that can revolutionize social networking today," Patterson said.

Bros hopes for his website to blossom at UCF. He believes that if the second-largest university in the country can catch on that it will be successful.

"I like to hope that this can do for UCF what Facebook did for Harvard," Bros said.

And maybe GreetSheet.com can connect two people the way that Bros and the mystery woman could not.

In the next few weeks, GreetSheet.com will incorporate more user-friendly aspects. Signing up for GreetSheet is free and involves registering a unique GS code and entering various social networking profiles.

The website can be found at www.greetsheet.com.