Diablo Valley College students seeking an alternative to Facebook need not look far.   “DVC Connect,” a social networking website created exclusively for DVC students, by a DVC student, is now live.

The website’s creator, Sam Smith, has taken his skills with computer programming, and come up with one of the community college’s first social networking websites.

Smith created “DVC Connect” which allows only students from DVC to make an online account to chat and share pictures.

With around 31,000 students, DVC has a large student body, some of who may never get the chance to meet. Smith wanted to make something that could connect students just here at the school.

“A lot of people meet their college friends through team sports, both inside and outside of school. I figured I could do the same thing by creating online get togethers,” says Smith.

Smith got started on the idea back in Spring of 2014, but then stopped due to lack of time and resources. He started the program from scratch relying on help from the Internet and research.

“I was hearing a lot of students complaining about not being able to socialize with anyone at school because people don’t stick around after classes,” he says.

“It motivated me to want to find a way for just DVC students to hang out.”

Smith launched DVC Connect to the public on Oct. 13, but he is still making improvements on it everyday. His ultimate goal for the website is to get the event feature up and running. He is currently working on the website by himself, but is looking to get a team of three or four people to help him finish building.

Right now the website is straightforward, with only a username, password, email and student ID required. Once signed up, you have the option of choosing the amount of personal information you want to put on your profile.

The idea of DVC Connect is to keep the conversations and picture sharing more private than say Facebook.

“In no way am I trying to make another Facebook, I just wanted something unique for the school,” says Smith.

Smith hopes to get the desktop version of DVC Connect into a phone app within the next couple of weeks.