A PRESTON student hopes to have a big dot.com success with a new innovative website.

Roger Stachis, 24, of Queen Street, officially launched hoowot.com last week.

It is a new service which lets users make free announcements to people anywhere in the world.

Roger, who was born and bred in Preston, has already received a five figure offer for a stake in his website from a company in Silicon Valley, California.

He is hoping for success similar to the popular search engine Google -- the world's largest search engine -- or e-bay which has become synonymous with internet auctions.

Mr Stachis said: "It's tempting to get carried away but if the site looks like it's going to make me a million before I am 30 then obviously I'm going to give it some serious attention.

"But in the short term I want to get back to college and get a teaching qualification."

Although he is remaining tight lipped about the offer from the big business dealer, it would mean handing over a 50 per cent share in the website in exchange for making it a limited company.

"It's running costs are pretty low at the moment and the site seems to be growing well under its own momentum, and I am not sure I want to be tied to a contract just yet.

"But the expertise of having a team of programmers who are experienced in search systems would be nice," said the computer science student who attends Nottingham Trent University.

The idea for the website came about when he was researching his final year project into human versus artificial intelligence, but he was having trouble finding someone that was working on a similar project.

The site is essentially a giant noticeboard where people can make announcements, and these can then be searched by users.

To see the possible next big thing on the internet, that started right here in Preston, log on to www.hoowot.com for details.