CriticalMass Isn’tNuclearWith ThisUniv BY JOHN VAN HORN


Zimride, an online network for ridesharing he co-founded, which is used at numerous colleges and universities across the country. “If you can’t find rides, why use the program? There must be enough choices so that the system is useful.”


I Sirinya Tritipeskul, rideshare


coordinator at UCLA, explained it another way: “Ridesharing is hard work. You need to find the right per- son, who is on a similar schedule and lives near you. That’s difficult. How do you know who you can trust, even if you can find someone? “Previously, at UCLA,” Tri-


FYOU DON’T HAVE a “critical mass,” you will fail. Nuclear fis- sion? No, it’s John Zimmer


discussing


tipeskul said, “the program was avail- able. We’d tried other rideshare pro- grams, but not very many people signed up.We knew we had hundreds, if not thousands, of possible rideshar- ers living in, for instance, Long Beach, but there were only a handful


riders, from each area. That way when people were put together, they would have a lot of choices. This is our criti- cal mass.” Zimmer and his company did that


by building an online ridematching solution that integrates with Facebook,


“By creating a web service that can integrate with Facebook, we’ve built a platform where people are comfortable signing up.”


of potential matches on the site. It made it extremely difficult to find a driver or a rider even if you wanted.” “We knewthatwe had to solve that


problem before attacking any other,” Zimmer said. “We needed a lot of peo- ple in the program, both drivers and


the social networking website most popular with college students. “Virtu- ally all students and most staff at a uni- versity are on Facebook and use it dai- ly,” he said. “By creating a web service that can integratewith Facebook,we’ve built a platform where people are com-


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