GenDigital

Looking For College Guys This Weekend?

Nearly two in three college men reported tuning into the Men's NCAA Tournament so far. Couple that with the fact that almost a third of sports television consumption is done outside the dorm/apartment, that is, in places like bars and restaurants, so where do you think a couple million college guys will be this Saturday afternoon/evening? We've noted the increased popularity of college basketball over the past two years with the highlight being March Madness. Check out Facebook (if you have an .edu address) Myspace or Yahoo and do a search. We've seen profile after profile with college guys touting their own picks and boasting how well or how poorly they're doing in their pools. Over the past five years, the NCAA Tournament has really become a phenomenon among millions of young men and now with all of the interactivity and connectivity the Internet offers, it is only getting bigger, illustrated by this year's March Madness on Demand offered by CBS. 

Student Protests Continue

Another day, more protests. USA Today reports that thousands of students took to the streets yesterday in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Dallas to protest the proposed immigration policy. In Los Angeles alone, more than 8,000 high school students walked out of class. In case you are wondering, I emailed with some of the high school kids in Los Angeles and found out they are organizing themselves through social networking sites like Myspace.com.

Welcome To The New Side of Coke

Coca Cola is hopping on the digital music/viral marketing bandwagon with the launch of a new branded entertainment site that offers users the opportunity to download and share music and video files from the artist Ne-Yo. In a continued effort to appeal to Gen Y, the number one soft drink brand is offering Ne-Yo downloads in a variety of formats including the use of the Bit Torrent service as well as being iPod compatible. We will see if this is a start of a new trend with consumer packaged goods companies following Coke's path.

Personalization...For a Fee

A new company called Meez has a novel idea for the millions of teens and college students who instant message. Instead of downloading one of the thousands of already created avatars (those small images next to the user's name when they post on message boards or in an IM window), Meez offers users the opportunity to create cartoon caricatures of themselves and then export the images where ever they want. The founder of the company (who also founded online music service Rhapsody) also plans to offer advertisers the opportunity to integrate messaging within the custom caricatures. The cost for users to create their own custom caricature will be similar to downloading a ring tone, a few bucks, but right now the service is free.

GameTap Reaches Casual Gamers

In today's Tech section in USA Today, there is a positive review of Turner Broadcasting's new online game network GameTap. The gaming network recently added a whole new series of video programming to compliment all of the games. Subscribers pay $9.95 for access. Casual gaming among teens and college students, especially the relatively under-served female demographic is taking off and presents advertisers with a solid platform.

Oh What Those College Kids Will Do For Their 15 Minutes

Skyler Bartels, a sophomore at Drake University, opted for a different Spring Break of sorts. While many of his classmates were vacationing at home or headed to a traditional Spring Break destination in Florida, Skyler decided he would spend a week at a 24-hour Wal-Mart as part of a magazine article he was working on. He ended up lasting 41 hours in a Wal-Mart superstore in checking out shoppers, watching DVDs and playing video games. Sound crazy? The sophomore has already made an appearance on Good Morning America, been contacted by a book agent and New Line Cinema about a possible movie concept. If they can't succeed on American Idol, there is always Wal-Mart. I guarantee there will be some copy cats immediately, the question is whether they will garner the same media attention as Skyler. As I've said before, this generation is all about attention getting and once again, Skyler validates my position. College kids will do just about anything for 15 minutes of fame.

Teen Magazines Go Mobile

First mover advantage (or even second sometimes) is typically a good thing. Not wasting anymore valuable time jumping into the mobile media world, Hearst announced yesterday it launched mobile sites for the number one read magazine among college women, Cosmopolitan as well as the number one teen magazine read among college women, Seventeen. The company said it also launched a mobile site for CosmoGIRL as well. The new mobile sites use the Bango mobile site service. Readers will have the opportunity to purchase ringtones and wallpaper for their mobile phones as well as access content like horoscopes and health and beauty tips.

College Affordability on the Table in Congress

Last month, Congress cut some $12 billion in student aid, not exactly great news for the millions of college students who continue to pile on thousands of dollars of student loans. There is another bill on the floor that would supposedly help lower income and middle income families. As you might imagine given the current political climate in this country, one side feels the bill is a winner and one side feels the bill does not go nearly far enough in helping students pay for college. I'll assume you know which side each political party is on. This is a huge issue that needs to be fixed. Among the 66% of college students that have student loans, the average amount they expect to owe after graduation is over $23,500 and it will take them an average 7.8 years to pay them off.

ESPN2 Launching Two New Programs

ESPN2, the 5th favorite cable network among college men, will launch two new original programs under the ESPN Original Entertainment banner in April. The first program, called "Free Agent," is a documentary style look at uber agent Scott Boras. The second program (which probably has a better chance of succeeding) is the airing of the U.S. Paintball Championships. Eight teams will compete for a $50,000 prize. Thinking now of ESPN Original Entertainment, whatever happened to some of those great series (that college men watched religiously)? Remember "Tilt?" It had a huge following among students. The network might want to consider bringing something like that back one way or another, either via online or mobile programming. Poker is still huge among college students, especially men.

Commentary: What Facebook is Really Worth

The top story in today's online edition of Business Week is that online social networking powerhouse Facebook.com is for sale. For the tidy sum of of just $2 billion you can own a large part of the college student market. By the way, It was really no secret they've been shopping site for the past couple of months. I receive at least one call a week from various clients and media people asking my opinion of the site and how it became so popular so quickly.  In its simplest form, the site is brilliant in offering college students exactly what they want: connectivity. Here's the scenario and you will quickly see how it scales to the 5 billion page views (which is more than Amazon.com) a month. Say you and I are good friends at a suburban high school outside Chicago. Upon graduation you decide to head south for some warmer weather and matriculate at the University of Florida that fall. I love the cold and love the wind and had much better SATs than you so I head over to Northwestern. As we settle into our new lives freshmen year at our respective schools we make lots of friends, all of whom are totally wired, of course. We stay in touch with each other all the time via cell phone and email and one day through a friend we stumble upon Facebook. In a short period of time through the networking capabilities of the site, I am communicating with your new friends (whom I never met face to face) at Florida and you are going back and forth with my new friends at Northwestern. Sounds simple right. It is, now just times that small case study by six million and you can see where the billions of page views come from.

I am no valuation expert, but $2 billion seems pretty heavy to me. Fox acquired Myspace which has four times the amount of traffic of Facebook for $580 million last fall. As much as I think MTV would benefit from folding Facebook into its offerings, I have to believe MTV wouldn't pay that much, especially since there are still very big issues to be worked out, that is the safety and security issues that get all the ink right now. Whatever the sale price ends up being, the bottom line is a couple of college students started something that is relatively simple, offering students exactly what they want, when they want and it took off.