Spring Break
College Tonight parties its way across the country
New social networking site encourages users to "get on, get up, get out"
Troy Abruzzise
Issue date: 10/11/07 Section: Lifestyle
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Does taking Jell-o shots off of someone's stomach sound more enticing than "poking" them over cyberspace? If it does, College Tonight, the new online social networking service designed exclusively for the college student may just be what the doctor ordered.
Following in the footsteps of networks like MySpace.com and Facebook.com, College Tonight promises to focus its attention solely on the needs and interests of college students.
College Tonight's predecessors also started out as college-specific networks, but gradually allowed universal admission. It was required that members of Facebook have a .edu email address until this past May. Now anyone, from high school students to corporations, is welcome to join the site.
According to ComScore, a data collection agency, about 70 percent of its members are outside of the original college age bracket, and that percentage is quickly growing.
This will not happen to College Tonight.
"No matter how much money we are ever offered, it will only ever be offered to college students," said Zachary Suchin, CEO and company spokesman.
Suchin, who graduated from Emory University with a degree in film and political science in 2005, and co-founder Jason Schutzbank, who is currently a business student at Emory, began development on the site in 2005.
"We saw a vacuum in the collegian market, especially in terms of social interactivity," said Suchin. "We're big fans of Facebook, but Facebook is a Web site, and we're a Web service. The future of social networking is not sitting behind the computer. It's getting up from your chair and interacting with people face-to-face."
But the idea of meeting online "friends" in a real-life setting is unsettling to some students.
"Face-to-face?" said freshman writing, literature and publishing major Elizabeth Santana. "Wouldn't that promote what the media has attacked networks like Facebook and Myspace for-interaction between strangers? I think that privacy controls would be really essential to the well-being of any network like that."
Following in the footsteps of networks like MySpace.com and Facebook.com, College Tonight promises to focus its attention solely on the needs and interests of college students.
College Tonight's predecessors also started out as college-specific networks, but gradually allowed universal admission. It was required that members of Facebook have a .edu email address until this past May. Now anyone, from high school students to corporations, is welcome to join the site.
According to ComScore, a data collection agency, about 70 percent of its members are outside of the original college age bracket, and that percentage is quickly growing.
This will not happen to College Tonight.
"No matter how much money we are ever offered, it will only ever be offered to college students," said Zachary Suchin, CEO and company spokesman.
Suchin, who graduated from Emory University with a degree in film and political science in 2005, and co-founder Jason Schutzbank, who is currently a business student at Emory, began development on the site in 2005.
"We saw a vacuum in the collegian market, especially in terms of social interactivity," said Suchin. "We're big fans of Facebook, but Facebook is a Web site, and we're a Web service. The future of social networking is not sitting behind the computer. It's getting up from your chair and interacting with people face-to-face."
But the idea of meeting online "friends" in a real-life setting is unsettling to some students.
"Face-to-face?" said freshman writing, literature and publishing major Elizabeth Santana. "Wouldn't that promote what the media has attacked networks like Facebook and Myspace for-interaction between strangers? I think that privacy controls would be really essential to the well-being of any network like that."
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