CollegeSlackers: Procrastination Central

Have an urge to watch a sea lion dance? Want to see a picture of a girl wearing a bra made of bacon? Or just really don't want to start that project just yet? CollegeSlackers has you covered. CollegeSlackers is a viral media site and social network targeting college students that features a spectrum of entertaining videos and photos from sports bloopers to political satire to wet t-shirt contests. At first glance, CollegeSlackers appears no different from the dozens of other viral video sites that will pop up if you perform a Google search for "funny videos" or something similar. In many ways, it really isn't. All of these sites circulate much of the same asinine yet utterly addictive viral content and there are far too many of them for me to catalogue here. However, CollegeSlackers does differ from most of these sites in that it has a defined target market of college students, which means that the site's media content, in addition to the usual fare, is also laden with footage of parties, pictures of scantily clad college girls, drinking games, and other content appealing to the college demographic. Even in this respect, however, it is tough to identify anything that CollegeSlackers offers in terms of media that the far more popular CollegeHumor does not. As I mentioned, however, CollegeSlackers is also styling itself as a social network for college students, a strategy which might offer a better opportunity to distinguish itself from competitors. Unlike CollegeHumor and others, CollegeSlackers offers community discussion boards, in which students can communicate and connect with other students from their respective schools, as well as general discussion forums, where everyone can come together to discuss topics such as "Booze/Sex/Partying," "Cars/Bikes/Sports," and "Class Related." I'll leave you to guess which of these see the most traffic. While CollegeSlackers will probably never compete with Facebook as a social network for college students, the social aspect of the site is at least a distinguishing factor, and something which could be developed further to help CollegeSlackers carve out its own niche, rather than remaining in the shadow of sites like CollegeHumor. The college-age demographic does seem to have an insatiable thirst for viral content and online video, so it may be that there is some room for CollegeSlackers in this already crowded market after all. However, if the site wants to set itself apart from the countless others that provide similar content, it may have a little more work to do.