The Internet is a space of infinite possibilities and knowledge. Information streams across the digital world, flying at nearly the speed of light. Almost anyone can make a space of their own, a box made with their fingers and mind. And that is exactly what Kelsi Guidry did, cut himself a slice of the Internet pie and claimed it for all teenagers across the globe. Guidry, health and wellness senior from Cut Off, opened a social networking web site for his company MyWants Inc. one year ago. The website is teenwants.com.
“The idea was to make teenwants.com into something similar to a facebook.com and myspace.com social network,” Guidry said. Guidry, 22, created teenwants.com because as a teen he said he found it difficult to find items online and he therefore would spend hours searching for them. Guidry discovered that many Web sites appealed to only two extremes. According to Guidry, some things on a web site, for example, were geared toward adults while some were too childish.
Finally, at age 18 in 2004, Guidry came up with the idea of teenwants.com as a solution to this problem. He created it to work like yahoo.com but made it more teen-oriented.
It was something Guidry had wanted to do, not just for teens, but also because he says he was very much into the idea of owning and running his own business.
On Feb. 19, Guidry’s business MyWants Inc. reached its one-year anniversary, but instead his job at the company has changed recently. For the first few months of the company’s life, Guidry’s job was occupied with paperwork and obtaining investors. For the last six months, however, his job has focused on computer work.
“The business is just starting up and is in the very early stages of development,” Guidry said.
A school section is on its way at teenwants.com for helping with homework, giving advice from studying to writing papers and giving information about college.
Another section under construction is a job section; its goal is aiding teens in finding jobs.
Fun and health is covered under a game section and a health and wellness section. The game section contains selections from the most popular online games, and the health and wellness section gives teens a chance to look into getting proper fitness tips and wellness advice. Other sections cover music, shopping, sports and movies.
“We attempt to cover any subject of interest in teenwants.com,” Guidry said.
Since teenwants.com is only for people from 13-19 years old, Guidry and his team are working on another site for people of 20 years or older. This Web site, called iwants.com, is alternative for adults instead of the teen Web site. Iwants.com keeps all of the same features from teenwants.com but transplants them into a social networking Web site for older people.
“Iwants.com keeps teenwants.com safer for teenagers and more appealing to the parents,” said Guidry.
Guidry said in the future, teenwants.com will send anyone older than 19 to iwants.com, putting any current user of teenwants.com on the iwants.com server.
MyWants Inc. works with socialsecurity.org, the company that sets the safety rules and measures on ebay.com. Another future endeavor is the creation of a safety and anti-predator team, which will consist of a group of employees that will watch teenwants.com and iwants.com constantly for online predators and other perpetrators.
The time spent starting the business took place at Nicholls, in the business incubator. The incubator is a free office space for a new businesses with computers, file space and projectors. There is a limited amount of time a business can stay there, however.
When MyWants Inc. leaves the incubator, Guidry said he hopes to move the East or West coast, where all of the big Web site companies are.