• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

New Social Networking Site Trugo Announces $100,000 College Tuition Contest

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 November 2007, 12:00 CST

MIAMI, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Trugo, a new social networking site, today announced a $100,000 college tuition contest which will award ten winners up to $30,000 in tuition funds. College students around the country may enter the online video contest by recording a four-minute video performance answering the question "Why Should Trugo Pay for Your Tuition?" The contest kicks off this week with a national campus tour and live demonstrations of the site at the University of Miami followed by similar campus visits to the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, Auburn University and Stanford University.

In their submitted videos, students are encouraged to describe their future aspirations and why they are worthy of the first place prize of $30,000 for their tuition. The video submissions will be voted on by the Trugo user community based on relevance to the contest theme, creativity and originality. In addition to the $30,000 grand prize, the second prize winner will receive $20,000 and third place $15,000. The fourth to tenth place winners will receive $5,000 each.

"College should be about learning, growing and socializing, not about worrying about how to pay your tuition," said R. (Chandra) Chandrasekar, Trugo's CEO and founder. "I was given a similar opportunity to express my creativity earlier in my life and it led me to found my first company. There is no reason a contest such as ours couldn't have the same impact on one of our future community members."

Trugo's tuition contest was born in part from an opportunity given to Chandrasekar just after graduating from college in his native Singapore. Due to that country's mandatory military service law, Chandrasekar found himself enlisted and without a clear direction of what to do with his life following his stint in the army. That's when a military officer motivated him by asking him a series of questions that led him to an opportunity to redesign his base's IT system. That experience redefined Chandrasekar's career vision and led him to form his first company at the age of 23. From there, he took that company's core technology and developed Trugo -- a site that allows users a higher degree of privacy and personalization than the "social classified ad" approach taken by other sites.

The Trugo social networking site, known as VelvetPuffin during its beta pre-launch phase, brings a higher level of customization that allows users to organize their online world their way, as opposed to having to work within pre-determined parameters of other sites. The new site allows users to experience a higher level of privacy, personalization and the ability to expand video content, by allowing users to share videos from YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe. Additional Trugo features include the ability to survey friends on topics like places to meet, HTML-free profile changes, photo sharing, blogging and "stamps" that express opinions on content, comments, etc.

To enter the tuition contest, students must first register at http://www.trugo.com/. Video submissions will be received until January 15, 2008 at 11:59 p.m. PST. Voting ends January 25, 2008 at 11:59 p.m. PST. Winners will be announced January 30, 2008. For complete contest rules, visit http://www.trugo.com/.

About Trugo

Innovative social networking site Trugo enables users of all ages to instantly communicate, create, and share personally-generated content of all types with friends and family. For more information and news on Trugo, please visit http://www.trugo.com/.

Trugo

CONTACT: Patricia Hogan of McGrath-Power Public Relations,+1-408-727-0351, patriciah@mcgrathpower.com, for Trugo

Web Site: http://www.trugo.com/

Source: PRNewswire

More News in this Category