From finding a date to fine-tuning a resume, Ulife.com has set out to become the world’s largest online college community by providing a one-stop shop for the university lifestyle.
Barrett Masso, chief executive officer, and Andrew Clark, vice president of sales, co-founded an online portal to satisfy the needs of college students through the exchange of trends and interests tailored to each university but connected through a national network.
Students are able to create profiles specific to their university and participate in an array of educational services, such as textbook exchanges, tutoring and job hunting. Remaining true to the college experience, ULife also offers recreational links to chat rooms, fashion advice and online photo albums free of charge.
The content of ULife’s website is based upon student input and suggestions.
A recent suggestion has addressed the upcoming addition of downloading music through the site.
Since the company was recently made available in late January, site users can tailor the site to their own tastes and preferences. Students have the opportunity to enter a contest to design the ULife mascot, and to offer their own expertise to be homework helpers for other members.
“ULife.com is started by students and run by students,” said Clark, a recent graduate from Indiana University. “We (Ulife) want to hear what student users want to see updated and make that happen.”
The idea of an interactive multi-service site was conceptualized by Masso about two years ago and made available to users two months ago. To promote awareness of the service, ULife staff has launched a road trip via a Winnebago bus to increase participation from universities nationwide. Promotional stops have included tailgate parties and hosting events to distribute free ULife merchandise.
Vaward Advertising is a company that evaluates ULife’s effectiveness by calling newspapers on large campuses. Vaward representative Jason Robblee said, “Traveling from campus to campus has really helped create buzz to get the word out.” He believes that once the road trip campaign covers more ground, the site will make strides in becoming an expansive online community.
“We’ve been up and down the West Coast so far and are planning on making our way to some spring break destinations, such as Cabo San Lucas, next,” Clark said.
ULife’s road trip will then travel to the East Coast, wrapping up the promotional tour in the Midwest.
“We hope to reach the University of Wisconsin by the end of the semester this year. However, if time does not permit, we will definitely be at Madison by the start of the new school year,” Clark said.
Clark said he considers UW to be a comprehensive community that would benefit from ULife’s opportunity for student input and suggestions.
“I think students will be very receptive to a practical service that agrees with the busy schedule of a college student,” UW sophomore Drea Lear commented. “It also appears that it will be helpful in setting up connections with people all across campus, and even on other campuses.”
UW freshman Bonnie Fleischer is skeptical that the site will attract enough users to reach its full potential.
“It’s going to be hard to compete with big-name online providers that supply similar services that already have customer loyalty,” she said. “For instance, it will be a difficult transition to make students abandon AOL to use ULife’s chat rooms.”
An incentive to login to the site lies in scholarships amounting to $50,000 that are being distributed to the three universities with the highest enrollments. In addition, trip giveaways and certificates toward book buying are also offered through ULife.com.
All students can become members by registering at www.ulife.com.
