Køllegelife™ Sets Up to be Complete Failure

While KøllegeLife.com, the newest social networking site, is still in its infancy, it has a long way to go before it becomes an alluring, online oasis for college students.  The problem starts on page one.  I see red when I log on to the site, not just because its name is printed in glaring, red block letters, but because the word “college” is spelled with a “k.”  Perhaps the creators intentionally misspelled the word to promote the site as a playful forum for college students, a place to kid around uninhibited. But the misspelled word sets a juvenile tone that is an instant turnoff to any intelligent student.

To its credit, KøllegeLife.com has a tempting hook.  “Almost 40% of Facebook users are now over 35 years old,” its title page boasts.  “Over 70% are out of college. Join KøllegeLife. Meet college students!”  These numbers are startling, since only four years ago Facebook was what KøllegeLife strives to be.  But now that Facebook has opened its doors to anyone over 13 years old, and articles about employers snooping the site have hit newsstands, a market has opened up for websites that cater exclusively to the college set, hence KøllegeLife.com. According to its managing partner Rob Teeple, the site, launched about a month ago, already boasts more than 600 registered users from 118 different schools and is about to kick off  a “national Campus Rep program” in the next 30 days to jack up membership numbers and create more site traffic.  “Every website starts with just one member and then grows,” Teeple explains.

Marketing itself on its privacy features, KøllegeLife.com affords its users an anonymity that creates an eerie atmosphere that makes me feel like I am surfing a chat room or a random online discussion forum geared toward college students, rather than an outlet where I can socialize with people I know.  While members must have an email address that ends in “.edu” to register, they must also create an “alias” that they will be known by on the site.  Sure, one can click on the screen name to view the user’s “Member Profile,” which lists the real identity of the alias and his or her college, class year, major, and interests––if he or she even provided that much information. Most of the member profiles I viewed, however, had no data other than the user’s alias.  But I can still feel safe on the site because everyone is a college student, right?  No, to put it colloquially, the fact that members roam around under different aliases freaks me out.  I feel more secure on Facebook, where users are known by their full names.  At least on Facebook users are people.

Regardless, the parts of the site that do try to foster cyber community just accentuate the air of creepiness.  Members are encouraged to upload pictures of themselves and their friends to the communal photo and video galleries, “K-Pix” and “K-Flix,” and post statements on “K-Blog: the national blog” or on any of the site’s 2,000 message boards.  The “Ladies” and “Dudes” sections of the “K-Pix” gallery is full of pictures of random men and women, many of whom have clearly tried to take their own pictures by holding their cameras out in front of them.  I am not interested in picture-sharing or browsing pictures of people I do not know, and these staged poses of men and women showing off to fellow members just adds to the site’s unsavory aura.  Apparently I am not the only one who is uncomfortable socializing with such members, because the communal chatroom, “K-Chatter,” has been totally empty every time I have logged in to it.

Moreover, there are not many features on KøllegeLife.com that I could not find elsewhere.  Many of the uploaded images have been taken from search engines, and many of the uploaded videos are popular YouTube clips.  “The Skoop,” a message board for members to post personal stories about college life, just seems to be a rip-off of CollegeHumor.com, the online Mecca for tales of collegiate hanky-panky.  My eyelids started to droop after playing a few games on “K-Play,” a collection of 100 computer games that do not pose much of a challenge.  And if the “K-Library” is supposed to keep members well-informed with a database chock-full of news items, then it better start collecting articles from reputable news sources, rather than self-help commentaries from NewsUSA, a little-known news placement service.

Collectively, these clichéd features obscure the few choice aspects of the site, such as the “Real World” section, an extensive list of undergraduate volunteer, study abroad, and internship opportunities, and the “NightLife” section, a directory of clubs, bars, and restaurants recommended by area college students.  At the same time, students can easily find these resources in the latest TimeOut magazine or at their college career center, so there is no need to create an account just to use those parts of the site. KøllegeLife.com merely consolidates resources that already exist on the Web and does not have enough unique attractions to draw users away from Facebook.

Overall, the website has yet to learn the old adage that Facebook gradually disregarded: less is more.  All college students need is a professional-looking site where they can easily talk and share pictures and videos with their friends.  KøllegeLife clutters the site with a mind-boggling array of frivolous, extra features.  Besides, even if 40% of Facebook users are adults, college students do not have to be “friends” with them; they can easily maintain a college-only networking experience.   So if KøllegeLife.com reaches out to Hamilton students as part of its nationwide promotional campaign, just say, “Kan it.”

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