A new social-networking Web site seeks to connect college students with one another in a setting without advertising, but it does more to connect them with businesses.
The site, JusCollege.com, which offers links to a range of services that include nearby food, spring-break trips, legal advice, receives a fee from those businesses when students make purchases through the site. “We’re really a marketplace for businesses that are looking to offer their products and services to students,” says Andrew Citores, the site’s founder.
The University of Colorado at Boulder is among the five campuses on which the site is active, reports the Daily Camera, in Boulder. Ten more campuses are in the works for this fall, Mr. Citores says.
Staff members vet student-oriented businesses on or near colleges to negotiate discounted prices for its members, who must have .edu e-mail addresses to sign up. The site designates 20 to 60 student representatives on each campus. They get incentives, including free travel, for encouraging classmates to sign up and make purchases.
Another Web site, CollegeOnly, is finding that it can be difficult to rapidly expand. In its first few months, it has narrowed its focus and opened up more to nonstudents, said Josh Weinstein, the founder.
The site was originally open to students of only four Ivy League campuses, including Princeton, his alma mater. It is now open to all colleges, and about 7,000 students have signed up, Mr. Weinstein said.
A relaunch scheduled for this spring aims to make more of the site’s content public. Anyone can now access the campus feed for each college, but only registered users can see the identities of people who have posted information.
Another new site, Diaspora, focuses not only on college students, but also on increased privacy in social networking. It was conceived last spring by four students at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Users can create groups among their contacts and specify what content to share. The founders raised more than $200,000 in start-up funds, from nearly 6,500 donors, on the Web site Kickstarter.
30 Responses to New College-Focused Social-Networking Sites Search for Niche
jandersen - September 26, 2011 at 4:14 pm
NCAA…is about money. If it was not about money, then why contract the millions for TV rights?
When will they (NCAA) acknowledge that they do allow athletes to be “paid”. Scholarships, food, lodging, travel allowances….
jring61 - September 26, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Of course, it’s all about the money. What Emmert seems to be saying is that the ADs did not do enough to spin it otherwise.
mgrandillo - September 26, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Well done!
cwinton - September 26, 2011 at 4:39 pm
The only embarrassment for Mr. Emmert is that that the hypocrisy that now characterizes big money collegiate sports programs was pretty much revealed even to the untutored by the self-evident greed motivating conference realignments this time around.
commentarius - September 26, 2011 at 4:53 pm
The precedent has been set now. Whenever a school is unhappy with its current alignment or feels that its demands aren’t being met, they will threaten to move to another conference. Conference cohesion is gone now that several schools have made moves and profited by them. It’ll be every school for itself, and the shuffling that seemed so jarring last summer and this will become an annual ritual. Meanwhile the NCAA stands aside and wrings its hands desperate to spin the story away from money and greed. But fans that fill the seats and networks that pay the billions don’t care about hypocrisy. The show has to go on.
22260556 - September 26, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Unbelievable! NCAA lives or dies by TV [BIG MONEY] contracts. Does Emmert think we are all idiots?
jwgilley - September 26, 2011 at 7:10 pm
15 years ago a football coach’s compensation was about twice what a full professor of business, engineering etc was. Now it is 20 to 30 times. Sounds like Wall Street to me…greedy get greedier.
willynilly - September 26, 2011 at 8:27 pm
It should embarrass them. It sends the wrong message. The public can easily conclude that the chief purpose of the institution is to seek and secure overwhelming amounts of money for itself; rather than seeking competent students and educating them well as a means of bringing wealth to the entire nation.
ontario - September 26, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Its about money, but as I read the Chronicle I also think the NCAA is about power. How these coaches treat these students. I can’t believe that someone in upper administration does not know about it and fire these coaches.
parsleylover - September 26, 2011 at 11:45 pm
I think Emmert needs to convey to his AD’s what it IS all about if indeed it is not about money.. Your article didn’t really tell us, and I am surely at a loss to know what big college sports is about other than money. One needs to to look no further than the ongoing scandals surrounding player recruitments and player academic performance to wonder what the heck big time college sports contributing to higher education.
Tarkio - September 27, 2011 at 5:51 am
Long live the NAIA.
11179102 - September 27, 2011 at 8:13 am
What’s truly embarrassing is how irrelevant the NCAA is in the realignment discussions.
dank48 - September 27, 2011 at 8:15 am
“The prevailing belief among the public and the press, he said, is that college sports stands only for money.”
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
krn1951 - September 27, 2011 at 8:26 am
After the men’s football coach, men’s basketball coach and President aren’t star athletes the highest paid employees at BCS schools?
LeeNickles - September 27, 2011 at 8:45 am
Interesting related piece at the Atlantic about the NCAA & the option to pay the players above the table:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/
digger1 - September 27, 2011 at 8:57 am
The NCAA should check to see how much money is loaded on the backs of students in the form of fees. It is amazing to go to so many different Universities that are spending like crazy in the name of recruiting. Each sport has its own training facilities, individual sports medicine facility, trainers and the list goes on. Coaches making one to five million, assistants making 250,000 or more. 90% of them losing money while keeping up with the the guys down the street. The eleventh commandment “thou shall not tempt” is the rule when recruiting at all levels.
Programs are crashing and unqualified students continuously are taken advantage of in the name of winning! Athletes spend eight or more hours a day lifting weights, learning plays, “unsupervised but required practices year round” yet so many can not speak a coherent sentence. Coaches create huge havoc, walk away and make more money at the next wannabe. Shame on all the Presidents, Chancellors and Boards of Trustees who stand by while athletic programs distance themselves from the University and arrogantly snub their noses at the hard working staff and faculty who stand by and watch.
civilprof - September 27, 2011 at 9:25 am
Of course this is about money! The discontent started in Austin and spread like wildfire.
interaffairs1234 - September 27, 2011 at 10:01 am
Remember that the Presidents of these institutions are ultimately the ones driving the realignment and chasing the MONEY. They like to pretend that the AD’s are the responsible parties but the vote is always done by the Presidents. Until a President is publicly embarassed by the behavior of athletics they stick their heads in the sand and pretend everything is wonderful.
ichrysso - September 27, 2011 at 10:36 am
I think most of the comments on this board prove to Mr. Emmert that the thinly veiled attempt to fool the public is more insulting than the truth - admitting that “college” sports is different from 20 years ago and today, this is just a play for money. If it wasn’t, how come he was not specific as to the “valid” reasons for each of the realignment scenarios? “College” sports (and especially football) have nothing to do with their historic academic and school affiliations. The marketing machine only cares about fans wearing a specific set of colors and those people buying tickets, attire and hotdogs.
dank48 - September 27, 2011 at 11:18 am
There are all kinds of costs incurred in “collegiate” athletics. Some of the costs are financial. Some are human.
dank48 - September 27, 2011 at 11:20 am
And the never-ending river of television money. Imho there is absolutely nothing in the world that television can’t ruin.
ridpath696 - September 27, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Most athletic directors are merely caretakers without any real power–not all but most. Emmert is just bloviating to an audience that has no real power. This is being driven by powerful boosters, presidents, and trustees. Why isn’t Emmert scolding them?
bonobo - September 27, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I’m probably in the minority on this, but I think the problem with college football and basketball isn’t really a result of what colleges have done, but what professional sports have not done. There are four team sports that are usually considered ‘major’ professional sports in the US – football, baseball, hockey, and basketball. Two are huge revenue sports at the college level, and two are only marginally more popular than traditionally non-revenue sports. What is so different about hockey and baseball? Players are drafted out of high school and have the option of playing in an extensive professional minor league system where their skills are developed. Only those who prefer to go to college and be scholar-athletes actually compete at the college level, although many of these are elite athletes who do go on to successful careers in professional sports. In football and basketball, there are no real minor leagues, and any player who wants to develop as a pro prospect is expected to play college sports. This lack of a professional minor-league has turned these two college sports into semi-professional leagues, with numerous conflicts of interest. I don’t know how to encourage the NBA and the NFL to take responsibility for player development, and I don’t know why the market hasn’t created such systems on its own. But if they existed, NCAA football and basketball would be more like NCAA baseball and hockey, and as a fan of three of those four, I’d be fine with that.
josephmr - September 27, 2011 at 12:25 pm
I think you’re probably right – we can expect to see teams switching conferences as abruptly and in greater numbers, much like coaches now leave their current teams for bigger or more prestigious “programs” much more frequently, ala Brian Kelly. (Although obviously teams won’t be able to switch conferences mid-season, or right before a bowl game.)
I was wondering though, if I’m naive for thinking that the Big 10 will remain relatively stable? Even with Big 10 teams’ tendency to lose bowl games in recent years, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to leave the conference. It seems to me that no one’s going to be looking to flee the SEC either, what with the sporting press telling us repeatedly and breathlessly that the SEC is the toughest conference in college football.
Thoughts?
kurtosis - September 27, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Big 10 stable? Let’s see, they brought in Nebraska because the conference has “high academic+research standards” and implies membership in the CIC (instead of letting CIC manage itself). Nebraska promptly gets booted from the AAU after more than a decade of warnings that were unheeded. Realignment makes Notre Dame look more alone… but the Big 10′s offer to ND was previously spurned.
Tthe Big 10 will be stable for its long-time core members; but, a reckoning is coming. The academics are getting tired of having the tail wag the dog. I suspect we’ll see either (1) Nebraska go and Notre Dame ignored until they get into the AAU; or (2) complete separation of the CIC and the Big 10 with the Big 10 then having funding cut (“because CIC will need to manage themselves, ya know… no punitive in any way”).
andyj - September 27, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Is this guy out of touch or what? Of course it’s about money. He took this job not understanding that? Either he is a hypocrite or he is totally guileless.
goxewu - September 27, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Tiny question: Are ADs the ones who, unilaterally, make decisions for the school to leave one conference and join another? If so, why bother having a President or a Board of Trustees?
Another, tinier question: Did the faculty athletic representatives get to sit inside the meeting room while the meeting went on, or did they have to stand out in the hall and promise not to try to eavesdrop?
It’s a cliché to use this cliché, but it’s all too apt: Mr. Emmert was, shocked, *shocked,* to find that big-time college athletic programs care mainly about money.
danieledoyle - September 27, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I am an American who completed his doctorate in Europe and lived in such places as Rome, Paris, Vienna and several places in Germany. I have taught at Villanova Unviersity since 1994 and love the Wildcats’ basketball team and their intelligent coach, but I have taught many scholar athletes over the years and I am convinced that varsity sports programs are a huge drain on college’s limited finanical resources and a distraction from the central mission of a university to promote knowledge and critical thinking however much they foster alumni support and loyalty. Student athletes are not left with sufficient to read, study and reflect. yes. I’m afraid it is all about the money!
disembedded - September 27, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Absolutely right!!
jeld56 - September 28, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Three cheers for all of the above posts – you are “right on the money.” Mark Emmert, previously Pres. of UW and the highest/one of the highest-paid university presidents in the USA, presided over football and basketball betting scandal at UW, then took another step up the big-time salary and power ladder, berating the ADs? Hypocrisy, thy name is Emmert.