Lore Unveils Its Next-Generation Social Network For Education

NEW YORK, July 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Lore, the fast-growing network for students and instructors, is introducing sweeping changes to its platform as the fall term approaches.

Since launching seven months ago, instructors at over 600 schools—including Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton—have adopted the platform. Lore gives courses a home online, providing management tools like a gradebook, and a Facebook-like environment for students to communicate with each other.

Originally known as Coursekit, the company is often described as the young challenger to enterprise software giant Blackboard. Lore's founders are clear, though, that their vision is about building a consumer-facing product—one that looks more like a modern social network.

"We've completely re-designed the platform in the new version," said 21-year-old CEO, Joe Cohen. "It's an order of magnitude more beautiful, easy to use, and powerful."

A highlight of the new version, instructors now have the ability to make their courses available for the public to "audit." Additionally, Lore now provides all students and instructors with individual profiles to showcase their background, academic achievements, and aspirations.

Just a year ago, Joe Cohen and his cofounders dropped out of Penn, founding Lore with a mission to make education more engaging. These changes, along with others that will follow over the coming months, are the next step towards the company's vision of building the largest interconnected platform for education, a global network of learners and teachers.

Lore has won Silicon Valley's support. The company has raised $6 million in funding, with investments from former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who used Lore to teach "Computer Science 183: Start-up" at Stanford this past spring.

About Lore, Inc.
Lore aims to build the largest learning platform in the world: a network of students and educators across schools and beyond. It's currently used to turn classes into online communities at over 600 colleges and universities. Lore is based in Tribeca with 15 employees, and has raised $6 million to date.

Contact Information
Hunter Horsley
[email protected]
(650) 291-3866

SOURCE Lore