Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Kyle Jernigan's site offers users the ability to post photos and offer them up for public judging.

BLACKSBURG -- Like most college students, Kyle Jernigan is an expert in navigating online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

But when Jernigan scrolls through profiles, he doesn't just think about potential friends or shared interests, he also wonders about holes his own Web site could fill -- opportunities that the Virginia Tech senior hopes can help 3-week-old Photo Duel reach comparable success.

A site that is part Facebook.com, part HotorNot.com and part Shutterfly.com, Photo Duel offers users the ability to post photos of themselves, their pets, their cars and their art photos and offer them up for public judging.

Once images are posted, visitors to photoduel.com can enter various sections and categories and then vote for their favorite of two photos.

Voters' choices are rolled into winning percentages, and those tallies are used to declare on-site "the current hottest girl!," the "best scenery photo!" and the top 10 antique cars.

Already -- and almost entirely through word-of-mouth advertising -- Photo Duel has attracted thousands of primarily college-age posters.

Between March 24 and Friday, the site had about 350 photos and had received 6,839 hits.

The site even has a profile on Facebook, and a Facebook group called Photo Duel Phanatics has been created -- as of Monday, the group had 105 members.

Jernigan said he started out just telling his friends about Photo Duel.

His friends told their friends and by Day One, Jernigan was approving photos submitted beyond his original Virginia Tech audience -- from campuses throughout Virginia and in other Eastern states.

Now, Jernigan estimates his audience is about "three friends deep" -- or his friends' friends' friends.

But beyond being a new forum for friends, the 21-year-old Jernigan said he hopes Photo Duel eventually will become a profitable business.

"They're doing it with Facebook. I'm pretty decent with computers and I figured, I'm in college, why don't I try it?" Jernigan explained. "I might be able to make a little extra money."

So far, the student from Richmond said he's spent $205 and a solid month of his spring semester developing Photo Duel. Much of that month was spent transforming an interest into a business.

Hoping to match the success of fellow student-turned-entrepreneur, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Jernigan has created his own corporation, obtained a Blacksburg business license, opened up a separate bank account and worked with an attorney to ensure he has proper legal protection.

But while he dreams of one day reaching -- and earning -- millions, Jernigan isn't relying on Photo Duel for his living just yet.

"I have a job with General Electric Energy in June and it's kind of like a hobby," the mechanical engineering major said of his Web site. "But if it became really successful, I'd love to not work and do it."

Right now, Jernigan said he makes maybe a dollar a day from the site -- all from the revenue he earns when Photo Duel users click on advertisements listed alongside photos.

Eventually, he'd like to partner with local companies to sponsor individual category photo competitions and sell ads on his Web site directly to businesses.

Advertising experts say if Photo Duel can command a strong audience, that isn't such a long shot.

"Advertisers are always looking for an audience and they're looking to reach their target demographic wherever their demographic is engaged," said Paul Pennelli, director of Web products for Y2M, a youth media and marketing firm in Boston.

"In and of themselves, MySpace and Facebook are great technology," Pennelli added. "But what makes them compelling is not the technology, it's not the code, it's not the tools that the technology offers, it's the audience that frequently engages with those networks.

"In that respect, if another social network comes along and develops a highly specialized audience or more general appeal than MySpace and Facebook, there'd by an opportunity for them, sure."

For a new site like Photo Duel to capture the attention of advertisers, it would have to reach a critical mass of users -- measured in numbers of page views, sessions and unique visitors, Pennelli said.

"MySpace is the largest player in this space," Pennelli explained. "All these other social networks have a pretty steep climb to match the sort of magic in a bottle that MySpace has captured -- but there are a lot of people trying."

One of the challenges Jernigan faces is expanding his reach beyond college campuses.

He's posted a thread to his Web site on an online antique automobile discussion forum and hopes local humane societies will eventually post pictures of their cats and dogs in his pet section.

He also hopes he'll eventually be recognized by the Google search engine.

"You'll get big once that happens," Jernigan said of Google.

"Right now it's, I tell my friend, he tells his friend."