Greysearch creators aim to create Vassar’s Craigslist

Mike Alberti Staff Writer

Have you ever wished there was a Web site where you could trade your books, check the menus of local restaurants, and look at professor ratings all in one place? Consider, then, checking out greysearch.com,, a new Web site created by Carlos Sawyerr-Ibriga ’07 and Ray Blackford ’07.

“We wanted to make a site that Vassar kids would find really useful,” said Blackford. “We basically just thought of features that we would like to see all in one place, and then put it together.”

Blackford said that he spent a lot of time this summer looking at Web sites like the popular free online classifieds craigslist.com, and thought that it would be useful to have a similar online community board that was college-based instead of city-based. He then presented this brainstorm to Sawyerr-Ibriga, and the two bounced ideas around for a while.

“It started as just a place where kids could trade their textbooks,” says Sawyerr-Ibriga. “I once bought a book on Amazon, and it turned out that it was a Vassar student who sold it to me. I could have just walked over to his room and bought it from him.”

Besides textbooks, restaurant menus, professor ratings and the “rideboard,” the site also has sections for students to advertise events, look up local movie showtimes, buy and sell anything from a couch to a mini-fridge to a piece of clothing, and offer and request services such as knitting lessons and computer repair. There is also the “greychat” feature, which allows students to discuss whatever they want anonymously. In the “freespace” section, members can post artwork, pictures of parties or events they attended, or anything else they might want others to have access to.

“Greysearch was spawned out of necessity,” Blackford said. “Making it specific to Vassar means that the site will mold itself to the needs of Vassar students.”

Although students do have to create an account to use many of the features on the site, they can create their own unique username, which, Blackford explained, allows students to maintain their privacy. E-mail addresses are never shared on the site, and communication between members occurs through the site’s own e-mail forum. These privacy features aim to allow students more freedom to speak their minds, Blackford said.

Blackford said that the site is not meant to be a social network. “It’s more like Craigslist,” he said. “Without the whole freaky weird side. It’s meant as more of an online marketplace for students, like an online classifieds specific to Vassar students.”

Blackford and Sawyerr-Ibriga are not planning to profit from the site and claim that they just wanted to create something that would be useful to students.

The site is now up and running, but Sawyer-Ibriga said that changes and updates are still being made. “The site’s going to get a facelift,” he said. “We’re going to make some aesthetic changes, and we’re still playing with the freespace section.”

“As people start using it,” said Blackford, “I think the site will evolve. If they aren’t using a feature, we’ll take it off, and if users have ideas for new features they’d like to see, then we can create them.”