Universitimes.com looks like a typical blog network–bloggers are paid to write about a certain niche topic and advertisers are wooed to show off their products to readers. The difference? The “niche” is a specific college campus written by a student from that campus. Presumably, one will be able to know what’s up at MIT or what’s new at the University of Florida.

This is from the website:

Universitimes is the first national college blog network. It is written by college students, for college students. Photos, topics, comments…all of it done by you– for you.

However, it’s still new so there are no blogs or advertisers as of yet. Is that a problem? Not really, but it will be interesting to see how the bloggers go about writing on events and gossip happening around their campus… without getting too analytical or too personal. Of course, it would be no fun if we didn’t know anything about the blogger.

Plus, would any college be accepted? It seems as if the main audience for the blog will be the students of the campus themselves. And, perhaps, prospective students who want to learn a little more about a college than what the viewbook offers them. But smaller colleges would make considerably less ad revenue, so would bloggers from these colleges be enticed to apply for a blogging job that is based on ad revenue?

I do like the idea of having a blog network specifically for the topic of “your college campus.” It makes everything seem more personal to the blogger, and readers from the campus will immensely enjoy the up-to-date info about all the nifty tidbits that could never get into the school paper. Of course, bloggers should be careful about what they write and whom they write about, but that’s just common sense.

I’d really like to see how Universitimes.com flourishes over time.

Source: Bleikamp.com

Posted on March 12th, 2007 by Joy
Filed under: News, Websites