New Haven Independent

Like a lot of ambitious college students these days, Wong, a 20-year-old Yale junior, is setting his sights on becoming not the next Jimi Hendrix, but the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Along with some friends around the world, Wong has come up with a new way for people to post and share flyers about community events on local news websites.

They formed a company called PaperG. They spent long hours writing code and chasing investors. They place social-networking versions of virtual bulletin boards, called “flyerboards,” on news websites. Community groups, artists, or anyone planning event can place their flyers on the boards. Readers can click on flyers to see them at full size and email them to their friends. (For more info check their website here.)

People posting the flyers pay on the PaperG site by credit card to post their flyers for however long they want — a day, a week, a month. A small fee is charged to their credit card accounts based on how many people see the flyers or email them to friends.

(For info on placing flyers on the Independent flyerboard, contact PaperG’s Susan Liu here. Click here for a detailed media kit.)

Wong envisions flyerboards as a way to link local communities at lower cost than in traditional media, and to create a revenue base that will help support quality local journalism on the Internet, including the new breed of “hyperlocal” web-only news outlets like the one you’re reading right now. Click on the play arrow above to watch him describe his company’s plan last spring as it was first taking shape; he was speaking to a Yale School of Management class described in this article.

Before the flyerboards go national, PaperG is testing them on two sites: the Boston Phoenix, and here on the Independent. Check it out on the far right-hand column of this page. See if there’s an event you’d like to attend, or if there’s an event you’d like to post. Click here for details.