Today I am happy to bring you an exclusive interview with Sam Marks the Marketing Director at College.com.
Sam was gracious enough to answer a few questions and give us some insight into one of the fastest growing social networks, and where College.com fits into the world of internet marketing.
College.com is a social and academic network that combines the academic elements of college with a student’s social life. It is aimed exclusively at college students with a .edu mail account.
College.com may have arrived just in time to fill that void that Facebook left behind when it opened its doors to allow anyone to join. Let’s hear what Sam has to say.
Virtual Marketing Blog: What is College.com?
Sam Marks: College.com is a social and academic networking site for College Students only. We are focused exclusively on one of the most marketable demographics- College Students. We are developing and positioning our site as an absolute necessity for college students, not just another account. The applications we have developed come directly from the minds of College student around the nation. The features were designed to not only help students get connected and involved at their campus, but also to help them with their daily tasks.
VMB: What makes College.com different from other social networks like MySpace or Facebook?
SM: Facebook and Myspace want to be everything to everybody. We want to be everything to the college student. We are building an interface that will enhance our members overall college experience by simplifying their lives and connecting them to the students and events at their campus. We want students to register and immediately feel in the loop of life at their school, and not worry about employers and parents invading their privacy.
One of our users, Florida State University student Kim Allan, recently put it this way: “Facebook is no longer for college students. Having your information listed on Facebook is like leaving an open copy of your personal diary for anyone to read. Eventually the wrong person is going to see that information. I don’t need to lose sleep worrying about new photos or comments that a future employer or family friends may see. College.com allows me to have fun in college without worrying about filtering content.”
As the quote above explains, college students don’t want to share their profiles, blogs, and last nights photos with the rest of the world. Our name says it all, College.com. We are strictly and exclusively for college students and will never step out of this market.
VMB: Will you allow marketers and advertisers access to College.com?
SM: We are focused 100% on our user base for the time being. Whats most important right now is that we continue to develop our site and focus on our users adaptation and satisfaction with the site. We have had numerous advertising inquiries but will not give them placement until we can provide positioning with confidence. In the months to come, we will provide marketings with a separate interface to access College.com.
VMB: How do you plan to Monetize College.com?
SM: College students are one of the most marketable demographics in terms of branding your products. Once we have an extensive user base, there will be numerous ways to monetize College.com. Marketers and advertisers will play a large role here. We will create meaningful and creative means of integrated advertising and sponsorship that does not interfere with our users experience.
VMB: One of the biggest complaints I hear about Facebook, is that after you are finished networking with your friends there is nothing to do. So besides networking with your friends, what is there to do at College.com?
SM: Great question, and we heard this several times in the focus groups we conducted. Our sites applications are built under our 60/40 plan -being 60% academics and 40% social. Our social features are predominately complimentary to our platform. Our course portal should be the most consuming part of a students experience on College.com (although many students use the social features just as much). Course note sharing, flashcard creation, course forums, and professor profiles are just some features that students have access to in our academics section. When we launch our professors interface later this month students will have the ability to access their professors course content. This is going to be very exciting!
VMB: Are you planning on allowing 3rd party companies to create applications for College.com, and if so are you planning on adopting Google’s Open Social?
SM: What students love about our current platform is that all the applications are standard. We have gotten a lot of feedback from students who say they are beginning to feel left out on facebook because they are overwhelmed by all the new applications. However, we are going to adopt Google’s open social API over the holidays and are looking into allowing 3rd party developer to create applications…but at a later date.
VMB: How are you Marketing College.com?
SM: College.com is a marketers dream, both internal and external. There are many online and off line campaigns we are putting together. However, of all out initiatives we have found that non-bias 3rd party publications have given us the best response thus far. Due to our domain and the enormous amount of site content, we receive a ton of search traffic everyday. Our word of mouth registration grows each day (known by registration reference) and this is imperative in order to achieve the critical mass needed.
Additionally, we had a launch party at Florida State University in order to reward them for being the first school with over 1000 users. It was an absolute blast! We packed the club with over 1600 people throughout the night. The whole party was promoted by staff on campus with shirts, flyers, and word of mouth. Here is our promotional video of the party.
College.com - The Official Launch Party
We are planning a road trip where we will host similar events at 12-15 schools after the new year. Corporate sponsors will also have the future opportunity to get on board with these events.
Some of the Key Players at College.com Include:
Jon Davidman is the President and Co-Founder of College.com. Prior to College.com, Mr. Davidman was a Co-Founder of Goldkey.com and Co-Founder of EarthQuake Media. He also worked at Yahoo! in the Strategic Alliance Group, was a Senior Account Executive at Broadcast.com, as well as Director of Sportsworld.com, a Broadcast.com division.
Jason Levine is the Vice President and Co-Founder of College.com. Prior to College.com, Mr. Levine was a Co-Founder of Goldkey.com, he was also the founder of NL Advertising, Inc.
Mary Magazine is a co-founder and in house counsel for college.com. She has been practicing law for over 25 years and served for eight years as a sitting judge. She was also In-house legal counsel for Date.com one of the Internet’s oldest and largest dating sites.
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Isn’t College.com trying to be what Facebook use to be?
Shane
November 14, 2007
Based on my dialogue with Sam Marks, it sounds like College.com is trying to fill the space the Facebook is leaving behind. And the way for them to succeed at that is to be 100% focused on College students and provide them with unique features and tools that they are not getting at Facebook.
And of course College.com can benefit from being the second major social network in this space by learning from Facebook’s successes and failures. I’m sure they have been collecting a lot of great information from their focus groups.
That said, I’m sure College.com will have to work hard so as not to be labeled a Facebook Clone.
Interesting interview, I am not sure how they will be different than what Facebook is or was but I am sure they are going to be a success either way.
What will beinteresting will be to watch to see what they do as all thier users graduate from college but still have all their memories, contacts and pictures on College.com - are they just going to let those members no longer login? If not then that is exactly what happened to Facebook.
Bookmark this interview and come back in 2 -3 years to see how their plans today change tomorrow…..
