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 the online portal to satisfy the needs of college students. It provides a national network that exchanges trends and interests tailored to each university.
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. 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.
Since the service became 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 as homework helpers for other members.
“ULife.com is started by students and run by students,” said Clark, a recent graduate of Indiana University. “We (Ulife) want to hear what student users want to see updated and make that happen.”
Masso created the idea of an interactive multi-service site about two years ago.
To promote awareness of the service, ULife staff has launched a road trip in 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.
“Traveling from campus to campus has really helped create buzz to get the word out,” Vaward representative Jason Robblee said, adding he believes once the road trip campaign covers more ground, the website will make strides in becoming an expansive online community.
Clark said Ulife plans to visit some popular spring break destinations, such as Cabo San Lucas. They have already traveled up and down the West Coast and will travel the East Coast next before 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 the website 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.”
As an incentive to use the website, ULife is offering scholarships totaling $50,000 to three universities with the highest student enrollments. In addition, ULife also has trip giveaways and certificates toward book buying.
