College students can now use one Web site for their home page and, in the future, social networking needs.
“We want the students to log on and have everything right there,” said Sasha Grosman, the marketing director for CampusLIVE, Inc.
The Web site caters to universities and colleges, including ASU. Each university has its own specific site, like www.campuslive.com/asu.
Co-founders Jared Stenquist, CEO of CampusLIVE, and Boris Revsin first created the site about two years ago in their dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Grosman said.
“[Stenquist] was tired of looking all over the Web for resources that students need,” he said.
The site features links to the athletics page, Blackboard, faculty sites and menus for local dining.
“Originally, it was just a few links,” Grosman said.
But he said the site now has an updated dining section, a faster connection and access to Google’s Gmail.
The site also has a connection to ASU Athletics, where it hopes to encourage students to support all ASU teams, not just major ones like football and basketball, Grosman said.
“We have partnered up with ASU Athletics to stream all their sports events onto our CampusLIVE at ASU homepage,” he said.
The social-networking aspect of the site is not functioning yet, but it should be working in a few weeks, Grosman said.
The first release of the social networking feature of the site will include no wall posts or chat features, he said.
The goal is to get all types of ASU groups on the site and allow them to form groups similar to Facebook in order to connect with one another.
The site will “let every group promote what they want to be doing,” Grosman said.
These groups will be different from Facebook because people will want to come back, and the group won’t become “stagnant,” he said.
“The problem with Facebook is that people join a group or event page and then forget about it. It’s a one-time action,” Grosman said.
The site will get students to come back, because each group or club on campus can manage their on page on CampusLIVE, and all events will be shown on the front page for every student to see, he said.
“This will allow groups to easily promote upcoming events, keeping their page active and up-to-date,” he said.
Some comparable sites are built by an older generation and are targeted for anyone, he said.
“[CampusLIVE is] specifically focused on helping college students improve their lives,” Grosman said.
He said there are about 1,000 students who visited the site each day this semester.
Although many students visit the site, there is still no intern for ASU yet, he said.
One former student, Ian Datz, a 2008 psychology graduate, still uses the site for its features and connection to ASU.
“Some of my friends told me about it,” Datz said.
He said he started using the site about a month and half ago and lives in California now.
He said he uses the site once or twice a week because “it has a lot of stuff on dining,” like menus and if a restaurant is open or closed.
He said that when the social networking part of the site is added, he would probably use it, “especially if it would keep me in contact with people from ASU.”
Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu.
