How to better stalk your friends

Chris Mirabile and his friends were going out on the West Side a few years ago, looking for a fun way to spend their night on the town. Alas, their night was a complete bust. The crowd wasn't good, their friends were spread all over the city, and they spent too much money.

But instead of going home defeated, Mirabile and his friends decided to do something to fix their problem. They wanted to create a tool that would help college students and recent alumni map out their social lives, preventing future lame weekends. Thus, the Hotlist was born.

"Picking up the phone and calling 10 different people to make plans takes time," said Mirabile, a Stern alumnus who graduated in 2006. "We wanted a way to see exactly what all our friends were doing instantly."

The Hotlist is an external Facebook application that synchronizes a user's Facebook calendar with those of his or her user's friends. A map shows where events are taking place on any given night, and the website notes how many people are attending that event, as well as how many of those attendees are friends of the user. It also gives the percentages of males and females attending to give users a better idea of the crowd at an event.

In 2006, Mirabile and his friends decided to enter the Stern School of Business' Business Plan Competition with their idea for a new social-networking tool. They took first place, using the $25,000 prize to build the website; they were the youngest team ever to win that prize.

A dorm room in Carlyle Court residence hall served as the team's first office. From there the Hotlist relocated to an office provided by Stern, one that eventually closed. Mirabile and his team had to find an alternative to costly Manhattan real estate. So when NYU-Poly opened an incubator on Varick Street to provide office space for tech and green companies this past July, Mirabile's group applied for space. Out of some 400 applicants, the Hotlist was one of 16 companies chosen for the space.

The incubator has given the Hotlist team credibility and a network to help them expand the business. Their website has been a success since it was made available to the public on Nov. 4. In less than a week since its launch, the site has received 10,000 hits with no press and no marketing budget. Users are even logging on from as far away as Libya. As more people discover the Hotlist over the next year and use it to improve their social lives, Mirabile hopes the number will increase to one million.

"Today, using a computer is all about sitting down for hours at a time," he said. "We want people to use the computer as a tool to get out and do things."

Gallatin freshman Alyssa Rinaldi tried out the Hotlist and liked what she saw.

"I think it's really convenient in the sense that I don't have to scramble to see where my friends are going," she said. "My weekend just got a whole lot simpler."

Katie Thompson is a staff writer.