For anyone with a story to tell, David Adewumi said he thinks he has the perfect place for it: Heekya.com.

"Heekya simply is a Wikipedia for stories," he said.

Adewumi (junior-information sciences and technology), who founded Heekya, has been working since this summer on his start-up Web site in Washington, D.C., with three other people.

"For the last hundred years, stories have been a one-way broadcast," Adewumi said.

This is where he saw a need for a "social storytelling platform," he said.

He said Heekya adds "collaboration" and "depth" to the storytelling process.

Assistant professor Elizabeth Kisenwether, director of the engineering entrepreneurship minor, mentored Adewumi.

She recalled a meeting between Adewumi and another Penn State entrepreneur, Matt Brezina. Brezina co-founded Xobni, a company that offers an e-mail organization tool.

"Matt Brezina and David Adewumi just hit it off," Kisenwether said.

Last April, Xobni rejected a $20 million buyout offer from Microsoft, according to Techcrunch.com, a top tech news blog.

Kisenwether also mentioned some of the resources Penn State offers to student entrepreneurs.

"I think the faculty that are teaching entrepreneurship, they're all great network creators," she said.

In a screencast on Heekya.com, Adewumi demonstrates how to tell a story on the site, using a wedding as an example.

"By telling their story on Heekya, Paul and Lindsay can share with their guests the complete story of their relationship, both by the time period that it happened and also by the location where the wedding took place," Adewumi said in the screencast, showcasing Heekya's use of Google Maps to map the location of a story.

"We have the idea at Heekya that a story may not belong to any one person," Adewumi continued in the screencast. "If you're at the same event with someone or found an interesting story, you can grab that story, copy it and tell your own unique story from your own vantage point."

Adewumi then described Heekya's user interface, saying media from different social sites such as Facebook and Webshots can be imported onto Heekya.

Heekya received funding and advice from LaunchBox Digital, an "early stage investment firm," according to LaunchBox's Web site.

Heekya is in its "alpha" phase of development, meaning it is being privately tested, according to the Heekya Web site. However, 25 testing invites have been offered at istbuilding.com, an independent news and opinion site focused on Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology, which allows the invitees to test the Web site before public release.

Heekya has garnered much press attention, including an article in The Washington Post and on Techcrunch.com.

Heekya is "derived from the Swahili word that means story," Adewumi said.

Swahili, an African language, is "a language of many people," he added.