Company Name

Lymabean

20-Word Description

Lymabean injects actual real-life usefulness into college social networking, by bringing students and local businesses into the same interactive environment.

CEO’s Pitch

College students are always looking for events, sales, and job openings around campus – while local businesses exhaust themselves getting that information in front of those same students. Lymabean brings these groups together in a social network that encourages an ongoing dialogue.

Built in Flex, the Bean’s interactive environment allows more than just the standard profiles and voyeurism. Students can easily share local events with their friends, bridging the gap between online and real-life socializing – and businesses benefit from the active shareability because it adds stumble-upon exposure they wouldn’t get elsewhere. It’s old-school word of mouth meets new-school technology.

Mashable’s Take

I don’t know if Lymabean is a name that evokes fun social happenings in the collegiate sphere. Furthermore, networking on the Web among university students isn’t known for its visual elegance, as evidenced by the photo frenzy that’s been going on for years on services like MySpace and Facebook. But if you want a seriously great looking setup to complement your great looking friend list and profile image, there are few facilitators that will please the user as much as Lymabean is able.

Putting aside for a moment the idea that a label change to something that isn’t so healthy for you might make this site grow considerably larger (snap proposal: how about a play on the classic “pizza and beer” ritual that happens days, nights, and mornings on campuses all over?), Lymabean proves itself to be simple, intuitive, and so conveniently segmented that you’ll rarely be confused by what you see. Which says a lot in a time when networks are annexing more and more stuff on the stuff they’ve already got - and doing so to some users’ very outspoken opposition.

No jumbled firehose of info to speak of here. With Lymabean you can categorize the list of people you know with drag-and-drop motions, and you can quickly see what events you’ll be going to and whether your friends are going to be there as well or someplace else. Of course, for folks with no daily agenda, there’s an option to search for stuff to do, or even create an event if you’re so inclined.

Remember this is all restricted to college users, so it kind of brings things back to the 2004-6 era when networks weren’t so all-inclusive as they are today. Is that a good thing? That’s your call. I imagine some of you might say Lymabean is “keeping it real,” to beat a long-expired phrase further into oblivion.

Naturally, it shouldn’t be expected that die-hard Facebookers will flock to Lymabean upon learning of its existence now or some moment down the road. (It’s been around for a good part of the year.) But there are those who understandably want to keep things as purely college-centric as possible - yet at the same time don’t want to settle for boring design. Granted, Facebook isn’t very boring, but it’s no Lymabean.

Again, I’ll say that the tag chosen isn’t so great. Really, ask your dorm buddies if they’re on Lymabean. Then note the response. But It only takes a moment or two of exploring to recognize there’s something pretty remarkable about this network’s digs. You might just thank us for showing you the way!

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

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