2008 Woodie Awards
New social networking site gears toward college students
By: Mike Fuksman
Issue date: 11/26/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Facebook and MySpace have new competition - college.com.
College.com is the newest networking site targeted at college undergraduates, graduate students and new alumni.
"When Facebook alienated their core user, the college student, and opened up their network, we saw this as a huge opportunity to provide a secure online social environment for college students," said Sam Marks, project manager for college.com. "Facebook and MySpace want to be everything to everybody. We want to be everything to the college student."
Marks said since launching in September, the site receives about 40,000 visitors per day and gets about 300 registrations per day.
College.com has many of the same features as Facebook, including photo albums and niche-specific groups. However, the site also has other features that may give it an edge over Facebook.
There is a news feed featured prominently on the front page of the site, as well as a weather display and event calendar.
A couple of the more unique features are the "Wake Up Call" and "Bad Date Call."
"College.com offers a 'Wake Up Call' system that will alert your phone when you need to wake for class. We launched a 'Bad Date Call' feature that will automatically call your phone during a date, giving you the 'perfect' excuse to leave a date early," Marks said.
The site also is integrating an academic section that will eventually allow professors to directly share course content with their students.
As of Sunday, the Web site had 90 members from CMU.
"We're very pleased with where were at," Marks said. "We're officially launching at about six schools per week."
The Web site picks schools to launch by a list of the school's population. They have worked their way down from that list, but also launch school sites if they get press from them.
"Most of the larger schools are complete," Marks said.
Each school's site will have its colors on them, sports information and other relevant information for the university. The longer the school has been launched, the more content it has.
Montrose freshman Maggie Dennis is new to the site, but enjoys using it so far.
"I like the news it has on there; it's kind of interesting," she said. "I actually want to read it and Facebook doesn't have any news."
Staff reporter Tim Ottusch contributed to this report.
news@cm-life.com
College.com is the newest networking site targeted at college undergraduates, graduate students and new alumni.
"When Facebook alienated their core user, the college student, and opened up their network, we saw this as a huge opportunity to provide a secure online social environment for college students," said Sam Marks, project manager for college.com. "Facebook and MySpace want to be everything to everybody. We want to be everything to the college student."
Marks said since launching in September, the site receives about 40,000 visitors per day and gets about 300 registrations per day.
College.com has many of the same features as Facebook, including photo albums and niche-specific groups. However, the site also has other features that may give it an edge over Facebook.
There is a news feed featured prominently on the front page of the site, as well as a weather display and event calendar.
A couple of the more unique features are the "Wake Up Call" and "Bad Date Call."
"College.com offers a 'Wake Up Call' system that will alert your phone when you need to wake for class. We launched a 'Bad Date Call' feature that will automatically call your phone during a date, giving you the 'perfect' excuse to leave a date early," Marks said.
The site also is integrating an academic section that will eventually allow professors to directly share course content with their students.
As of Sunday, the Web site had 90 members from CMU.
"We're very pleased with where were at," Marks said. "We're officially launching at about six schools per week."
The Web site picks schools to launch by a list of the school's population. They have worked their way down from that list, but also launch school sites if they get press from them.
"Most of the larger schools are complete," Marks said.
Each school's site will have its colors on them, sports information and other relevant information for the university. The longer the school has been launched, the more content it has.
Montrose freshman Maggie Dennis is new to the site, but enjoys using it so far.
"I like the news it has on there; it's kind of interesting," she said. "I actually want to read it and Facebook doesn't have any news."
Staff reporter Tim Ottusch contributed to this report.
news@cm-life.com
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