Chattanooga Based Knetwit Links Students With Notes & Study Guides

Call it the cyber version of cliff notes, only these study guides aim to be specific.  "There's 1.92 billion notes created every year, that's more notes than books in the library of congress, and they don't go anywhere," says Ben Wald, co-founder of Knetwit.com. 

Nestled in an unassuming brick building in downtown Chattanooga, Knetwit rewards its users for sharing their knowledge.   Co-founder Tyler Jenks says "we program here but the machines that everybody sees the site, that the site runs from are in Seattle."

Knetwit.comThanks to on-line ads and other revenue streams, students who upload notes and study guides to Knetwit get paid everytime someone else downloads their work.  Wald says "you can find notes that would be relevant to you and 100 other people or 10 million other people, or you can also find class notes that are just relevant to you and 25 other people who are from your class with your professor."

The better your notes, the better your Knetwit ranking, which leads to more downloads.

Knetwit launched about two months ago with users at 88 schools. Now students and faculty from 540 colleges and universities including UTC, now use the site.  Today, 217 UTC students are registered users.

Knetwit has taken some heat from university professors, concerned students might skip class or plagiarize work available on the site.  Jenks feels differently.  "Professors are the ones who really facilitate the learning process, they're the ones who synthesize the ideas, they're the ones who inspire students to learn various things."

Meaning no amount of notes can make up for missing class.

Knetwit plans an expansion into the high school arena soon.  The company hopes to link classmates at local schools before rolling out that feature nationwide.