Accel Partners is leading a $1.8 million investment in Collegefeed, a service that combines crowdsourcing with social networking to connect students with each other and potential employers.
Collegefeed uses data as the foundation of its service. It offers a Facebook-like news feed where students can access tuition help, job opportunities, interview-preparation help and access to alumni and mentors. And last month, the company launched a recommendation tool. With algorithms and crowdsourced data from CrunchBase, AngelList and other sources, the service makes recommendations about what employers and students should be interested in. Over time, it will recommend particular jobs and similar people based on their own profiles and other data.
As the network grows, it will connect students in a variety of ways, including how they compare competitively to their colleagues across shared interests.
The Collegefeed service launched in May to three engineering-focused schools in the Silicon Valley: Stanford, Carnegie Mellon SV and the University of California at Berkeley. It is now broadening to other universities and catering to students studying the liberal arts, sciences and other disciplines.
It also offers unique packages such as its award service that it plans to launch in September. Employers will offer challenges with winners receiving cash awards and opportunities such as expense-paid trips to spend a day with potential employers.
If Collegefeed can continue to build services based on the data it collects, then it should have no problem establishing itself as a service that students and employers flock to in order to connect.