Websites like Craigslist and Facebook are popular destinations for students searching for books or looking to make friends.

www.Allseen.com, a new site founded by CEO and Oakland University alum Ron Kolito, looks to provide a different direction in the way online users search and network.

 

For a good cause

Kolito, who played hockey for the OU Men’s Hockey Club, began the company March of 2012 with the intention of providing a new face to search sites like Craigslist while eliminating headaches for users.

“I just wanted to make it simple,” Kolito said.  “I found from personal experience that a lot of websites tend to overwhelm you, and I didn’t want to throw too much at those looking to use the site.”

Aside from online aspirations, the ultimate goal is to fight a battle much bigger than a complicated click and search.

The idea came after losing several family members to cancer.

Now Kolito is looking to bring a community of people together for the greater good to help find a cure.

Users can post on www.AllSeen.com for free, but have an additional option to add a featured ad to their post for a dollar, with a percentage of the cost going to the American Cancer Society.

“What we want to do is develop a group of people that enjoy using the site while helping to a good cause that many can relate to.” Kolito said.

 

Bringing it all together

Allseen was started with the focus to appeal to college students offering the ability to network together while giving users a chance to shop and search online.

The site has seen its share of changes within the last year, from including an overhaul to make the site more appealing, and keeping things simple, to hold the attention of users.

That process consisted of going through the site, shortening the steps taken to reach links and adding the ability to meet new people, all stemming from the goal to create a mix between a Craigslist and Facebook.

“The main thing for me was how I could keep the people’s attention,” Kolito said.  “With so many social networks and search engines available, we wanted to be different while keeping it simple.”

 

Changing the competition

Working with a limited budget and facing competition from already-established companies, Allseen.com is looking for new ways to appeal to new users as it is in its final stages of creation.

With starting a site similar to Craigslist, the new upstart looks to eliminate some of the problems that users run into, like fraudulent accounts and dealers currently being limited to college students only.

“My main issue is that I don’t know what’s real,” local resident Edward McGee said.  “A lot of the time there is too much going on; it will be interesting to see if something simpler helps.”

“We felt if we were going to create something like this we needed to eliminate the greed,” Kolito said. “On sites like Craigslist, since it’s so open, it leaves the opportunity for fraud so limiting usage was necessary.”

 

The final touches

With the company set to be fully up and running by the summer, Allseen.com will be available to students with the idea to expand to other college campuses.

Some of the features to be included with the OU based company will be the ability to find friends online and to upload video through YouTube.

Like Craigslist, it will also feature general classified categories ranging from buying and selling of personal items to dating features and employment ads.

Once the website is fully up and running, Kolito hopes that it can be a one stop site for many of users’ online needs.

“In the end it should feel like a social media site but also be a go to place for everything else one would need or search for online,” Kolito said.