Innovation in College Media

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by Ray Reed of the Roanoke Times about the company's BigLickU college social networking site. Regular readers know we've covered the site extensively in the past - see all coverage here. Reed's story marks the official "launch" of the site with a huge marketing push by the Times to get students to sign up for the site. Read Reed's story here: Look out MySpace: New site in town.

As mentioned in previous articles, college media advisers should follow this story closely, because if Roanoke is successful, you can bet there will be other commercial efforts in a similar vein that would affect the bottom line of college media outlets.

Will they be successful? The jury will be out for a while. Likewise, it will be difficult to tell in the short term whether the added competition will greatly impact Va. Tech's self-supporting student media outlets.