Spotlight: College Tonight Takes on MySpace, Facebook on Coveted Turf

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 26, 2006 - 10:20am.

At the Digital Music Forum West in October, Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, predicted that social networking and peer-to-peer sites will evolve into smaller communities where users will find more people with similar tastes. “The people you are interacting with will become more and more like you,” Garland said. “It will be smaller groups, and larger phenomena.” Enter Zachary Suchin, the 22-year-old President and CEO of the social networking site College Tonight, who believes MySpace and Facebook have seen their best days pass.

In a phone conversation from his Los Angeles-based office, Suchin offered his analysis: “I think the biggest mistake every social networking company has made is that the experience stops when you get up from your computer.” Juice Wireless, a company that allows users to post photos, text, and videos to weblogs and Internet profiles, announced on October 24th that it has partnered with College Tonight to use its “Juice Caster.” “With Juice Caster, College Tonight users can share everything that happens instantaneously, the moment it happens,” said Nick Desai, chairman and co-founder of Juice Wireless, in Red Herring.

Suchin elaborated, saying, “The mobile component was very important because the natural realization you have to have is that college kids are mobile, and college kids like two things: they like to socialize, and they like to party. And we’ve taken the best of both worlds and combined it into a social network that really is what social networking should have evolved into a long time ago, and that is a site that actually promotes social interactivity rather than lassoing you into a sedentary lifestyle looking at pictures of girls you’ll never meet.”

With college kids having seemingly endless options for social networking sites, Garland’s opinion about the ‘nichefication’ of social networks appears to be happening, and Suchin believes College Tonight is positioned to take advantage of this emerging trend. “I think we’re at a time now when we know what works and what doesn’t. The biggest mistake these companies are making is that they’re getting lazy. A site like Facebook doesn’t need to make an adjustment, because they are going to sell for more than $1 billion. We are coming on the scene, and we don’t want to act as another novelty, as a company that is taking a couple things from another site and changing it a little bit and trying to exist as a completely different animal. Our goal is to provide a service that is unlike anything else anywhere.”

But College Tonight, with its focus solely on college students, will have its skeptics. For one, growth is limited to the college market, and two, there is little incentive for users to take the experience beyond campus after graduation. To the first point, Suchin acknowledges that not all college students will take interest in his site. “We realize that we’re not going to get every college student because we know every college kid in the United States doesn’t go out, isn’t social, and isn’t excited about being socially interactive.” He estimates the size of the potential College Tonight consumer pool to be around 10 million students, and in only its first few weeks, the company has an estimated 2,000 users. To the second point, Suchin believes College Tonight users will not necessarily switch to other options upon graduation. “I guarantee you that when someone is 22, 23, or 24, they’re still friendly with people who were freshman when they were seniors. They’ll still be friendly with the kids in college.”

But it might not be important that users continue with College Tonight after graduating. As Garland points out, consumers of social networking and peer-to-peers sites will flock to communities that share as many mutual similarities as possible, and it’s difficult to imagine graduates will want to remain engaged in their old college lives.

In addition, the natural enclosed bubble of a college campus only strengthens the potential that a college-focused social networking site has a significant chance of working. Facebook, until recently, was the social networking choice of the college audience, if only for the fact that its service was limited to people with .edu email addresses. But now that it has expanded beyond the college market, people like Suchin believe the college audience will move away from the service.

Despite the changes at Facebook, Suchin says the company remains a factor. “The reason I keep bringing up Facebook is because for the college market we really only have one competitor. MySpace is garbage. The future is not in MySpace, it’s in a very well put together site that doesn’t allow people to customize it so that it causes bandwidth problems and is slow. And the future is not in a site that simply acts like a Rolodex, like Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I use Facebook, and I happen to like it a lot, but the only reason I use it is to go on to look at girls.”

College Tonight simplifies user profiling and relegates the information to the points that the company believes college students are most interested in knowing. “We don’t have extensive profiles,” Suchin said. “You go on our site, you’ll see, ‘What is your favorite bar?’ ‘What is your favorite drink?’ ‘What is your name?’ ‘What frat are you in?’ Okay great, let’s move on to getting social.”

College Tonight is currently available at 194 campuses. Suchin says the company is privately funded, and would not disclose the names of any individuals or companies involved. He did say, however, that major deals are in the works and will be announced in the near future.

Scott Goldberg

Related Links:
College Tonight Partners with Juice Wireless to go Mobile (Red Herring)
Some Users Renounce Social Sites like MySpace as Too Big (WSJ - sub.)
www.collegetonight.com
www.facebook.com

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Comments

haystack

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on October 27, 2006 - 4:27pm.

You may be interested in this: Haystack is a new music social network designed for music. It integrates memetracking and social bookmarking on top of a social network platform to create the community. It also has legal content from major and indie labels. Other features included drag/drop ajax profile builder, robust search tools, and a program of Tastemakers to help users find content they're looking for.

I dont understand what

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on September 30, 2007 - 6:32pm.

I dont understand what CollegeTonight is trying to do. It seems as though you can do all that on Facebook or better yet, in person. I thought the Collegetonight was encouraging users to socialize with each other, but when you face the facts, you're still in front a computer?

Great story, I agree I think

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on November 4, 2007 - 6:54am.

Great story, I agree I think that myspace and Facebook's best days are behind them, although they will continue to grow because of their open markets. I particularly like a new one for college students www.College.com. They have got a great structure and and a priceless domain.

WHY I DON"Y LIKE THIS SITE

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on November 18, 2007 - 11:45pm.

Wow, look another stunningly awful social networking website has graced the Internet. Hey I have an idea, instead of calling, IMing, my friends to ask them where they are going tonight, I'm going to use some lame website called College Tonight. Who is running this company? Here the article says that the "natural bubble" may make this successful. But on the other hand, I read that Suchin wants the focus of this website to be on actually going out (Vague). So, from a business perspective Suchin wants College Tonight to be focused on keeping kids stuck within their University bubble in order for his website to succeed? Do you want to be stuck within your school "bubble"? Do you even know what the "bubble" is? For those of you who don't know, the bubble is the small area in which your college life revolves around, which people only from your college or area. This concept is very common within small schools i.e. Emory. Does this sound appealling to you? Is this where you want to be stuck in your college life? I tell you what, I have many friends from all over the United States who have all went to small schools. Each one of them said that one of the major regrets that they have is staying within the "bubble" of their school instead of going out and experiencing the city, area, or state in which they lived for their 4-5 years. So although Suchin has created a social networking website to connect people, he is trying to strengthen the boundaries of the "College Bubble" through College Tonight. And, in a sense, ruin the essence of your personal experience at college. Of course there are positives to College Tonight 1. The company is young and the entire management staff is young and ambitious (see wikipedia or read other sites) therefore, they may have the ability to adapt quickly to the changing social networking industry as well as constantly develop the innovative aspects of their website to better suit the younger generation. 2. They have Suchin's dad who sits on the board. So, if the company tanks, they can always look to him for advice and financial backing. 3. They have a deal with a mobile company in Los Angeles (See other articles on College Tonight Website). 4. They have a CEO who is experienced in developing new companies. Unfortunately, these four strengths are major weaknesses. 1. The fact that the management staff is young may produce severe power struggles within the company due to neophyte ambition and knowledge of the varying aspects of how the business community really works. The quick adaptability may be hindered by Top Management hubris and disloyalty to his young staff. 2. The fact that Suchin's father sits on the board is a major problem. It is very likely that the father's business interests may overshadow the judgement of Zach Suchin. The father will always play a large part in the development of this company. Throughout my research I uncovered that the Father is in Talent Management or something like that. So, what knowledge does he really have of the social networking industry? 3. The fact that College Tonight went mobile with Juice Wireless says alot about Suchin and who he wants to affiliate himself with. The Company heads for Juice are known as SCAM ARTISTS and general lowlifes who are destined to fail and are constantly berated via-blogging (See http://cognections.typepad.com/lifeblog/2006/01/nick_desai_from.html). This is really important before your read any further. (If you want more information about this just respond to this blog). Also, have you even heard of Juice Wireless? Apparently they have been out for three years and still have not really deone anything. 4. Last of all, College Tonight has a CEO who is experienced in developing Promoting Companies in which he sold immediately after success. What does this say about him? He is ready to sell out, (indirectly sell you out if you are a user) to whomever pays him a little more money. He is not loyal to his users, and is completely not loyal to his staff. If Suchin goes public (In which he is already looking to do so 'see other articles on site' i.e. Google it, it will come up). What is the gaurantee that he will stick to his oath of exclusiveness? Won't the company who buys him out have a large say in this decision? Not to mention, would the company who buys him out not want to place their own puppets in College Tonight's Administration? Of course they would. And once again, you have a website that has abondoned you due to a CEO's ambition to constantly buy & sell companies before he is even off his feet. Not only is Suchin untrustworthy, he is also underqualified to be creating this company. The only companies that have been successful for him are Promotional Companies for Parties and Clubs. Which is great, but online networking is completely different, which was put into effect when another small start-up Internet company hired Suchin on for leadership in which the company ended up failing (See old bios of him). But, don't let me decide for you, research if you like and do not pay attention to the press releases (which are released by PR Firms that are likely to be contracted by College Tonight Inc....yeah, that's the truth, the PR firm that represents College Tonight gets paid all sorts of money in order to hype up the company). After reading, analyzing and interpreting the information provided to my about College Tonight, I believe that it's simply a terrible company and a bad investment. What do you think? I hope I've made my point.

filing

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on November 29, 2007 - 6:24am.

your statement that Simex is now current in its filings is not correct. as a matter of fact, the entire episode with the purchase of Wooju Electronics or Korea, and then the failed attempt to purchase each others shares puts both you and Simex in violation of Sarbannes Oxley, in that Jagelid claims that there are no omissions of material facts in the filing. wrong and culpable

re filings

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on November 29, 2007 - 8:54am.

I amused that my last email ended in a queue...just check the SEC filing by Simex on November 27..then go to the site Simex Technologies and Wooju...was there activity between these two companies in 2003 and 2004 that ended in disaster...why did Jagelid perjure himself and now involve College Tonight in the signed statement for Sarbannes Oxley step up and be counted boys, and stop the b.s.

gee, i wonder if the person

Submitted by K-dawg (not verified) on December 12, 2007 - 9:30pm.

gee, i wonder if the person who wrote the two posts above me is from college tonight. hahaha. If that isnt obvious then i dont know what is. anyways, so nice of you guys to take the time out of your day to look like desperate fools. So, to echo the college thesis above my post, college tonight is a pretty lame site.