If CampusLive.com is a Massachusetts business success story, Mass. is really screwed
As I was driving down to Easter dinner in Boston today, I heard an ad featuring Governor Deval Patrick speaking about “another Massachusetts business success story” that he was “proud to introduce.” To my surprise, the company was CampusLive.com, a site that purports to provide students with an alternative campus portal for their particular school. This portal offers things like restaurant listings, access to email, weather, etc. The site happened to originate with students in the Amherst, MA area, so it is natural the company is located there.
Now, the only dealings I’ve had with CampusLive have been negative ones involving some rather deceptive, unsolicited mass e-mail communication (what one might call “spam”), and the sudden demand made to local merchants that they pay for a listing of their menu on the site (a service that was previously free). The company seems to have backed down on both issues for now, but they’re currently running a two-year-old menu for one local establishment that lists prices much lower than those currently charged. Furthermore, it doesn’t take a lot of research to see that their site doesn’t have a lot of traffic, even though the main domain URL covers all traffic for all campuses.
Perhaps the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should do its homework a little better when selecting prime examples of successful businesses in its own backyard. Or maybe they really did pick the best option…after all, the state is considering even more taxes to pay for its out-of-control debt.
Comments
Jared Stenquist (Apr 13, 2009)
Vasken – I’m sorry that you disagree that we are a Massachusetts success story. This commercial was put together after we were voted by hundreds of thousands of people into Businessweek’s “Best Young Entrepreneurs of 2008″. One of the judges was Sir Richard Branson. I would venture to guess they are on to something here.
As fas as spam goes, we are completely against it and do not participate in it.
As far as traffic goes – you site “Compete.com” which guesstimates our traffic from browser toolsbars. It is a horrible estimate that doesn’t even come close to reality. We provide actual statistics to any customer.
As far as menu listings go things are quite fair. We have thousands of students coming to our site, you have a menu. We charge you for advertising it. It’s a pretty standard advertising scenario.
If you would like to contact me directly about your issues you can email jared-at-campuslive.com or just call our office.
Casey Bisson (Apr 13, 2009)
But their competition is Facebook, nobody else matters.
Why spend money posting a menu somewhere when the same money targeting people in Facebook will drive a lot more traffic?
Casey Bisson (Apr 13, 2009)
Hey, I just checked courseadvisor.com, one of the Google advertisers on this page and found they rank in the top 20K in Alexa and get about 1.5 million unique daily visitors in Compete. There's a yardstick to measure against.
Jared Stenquist (Apr 15, 2009)
Our competition isn't facebook – we have very little to do with anything social, besides sharing content on facebook and commenting on restaurants and businesses.
As far as Alexa data – Alexa relies largely on their Toolbar installs and somewhat on ISP analytics that are sold.
Because over 80% of our users are on college campuses (who do not sell their private network analytics) their data as well as Competes tend to be hugely innacurate.
We measure our success through looking at server side stats and google analytics. Server side stats include robot traffic, and google tends to be conservative since the JS file doesn't *always* load and it does filter out robot traffic.
Here's some info from Matt Cutts of Google on the innacuracy of Alexa. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/thoughts-on-alexa-d…
Karen Mason (Apr 16, 2009)
I checked it out and its an ok site, but it isn't anything special.
The scary thing is, if this site is popular, why is the manager of the website contacting a blog? If I owned a website that was getting accolades, I wouldn't get mad at criticism.
I worked at a place that has camplive, and they give some traffic. But they have this huge contract ( like 600 a year plus some phone charge ), and my boss went nuts.
But business was good, so I guess its worth it. These college sites are all the same. They come and go, so no big deal.
Karen Mason (Apr 16, 2009)
About the stats: no matter how off website stats are, they aren't that far off. Even if Alexa or Compete were off by by 500%, the website isn't that big.
When stats are off, they are usually off a lot. But if this site is popular at all the colleges in Boston, it would get at least 120,000 per month. No way any site is off by 1000%.
Deval Patrick better get off his ass and support some real company like a computer tech or health tech co. You're right, if college websites the best that Boston can do, then let's start gathering around the soup kitchens!
John (Apr 17, 2009)
I personally think that they deserve a lot of credit. They're all Self-employed and nationally recognized by Business Week. They're doing something right.
You should all stop hassling them, my hat goes off to you CampusLIVE, keep up the good work.
Karen Mason (Apr 22, 2009)
The only people that would know that they are self-employed is someone who works for them.
My hat goes off to whoever is doing their publicity. Anyone who owns a small business is self-employed. My hat goes off to everyone doing it on their own, but to say they are a success story…
A success story would be if the Bruins sweep tonight.
John (Apr 22, 2009)
Looks like they just made the news out in Springfield. Maybe this will give you a better sense of what they're all about.
http://www.abc40tv.com/global/story.asp?s=1023163…
Timothy Haroutunian (Apr 22, 2009)
@Karen I believe you can call it a success story…by that I mean the Bruins sweeping Montreal out of the playoffs. The Bruins dominated every game they played and proved that they are number #1 team for a reason.
P.S. CampusLive == New York Yankees….They both SUCK!!!
Brad (Jun 29, 2009)
Karen Mason = extremely uniformed…
CampusLIVE seems to be the real deal, you said it yourself, for companies that use CampusLIVE, sales are great. What is your problem here? You say the site isn't special, but it is increasing sales for all of its clients, and college students use it for food, tv guide, the weather, and a lot more. All of my friends use it everyday, and businesses love it. I don't understand your argument…
Allie (Oct 02, 2009)
hey, just saw this post.
they are pretty big in providence college!!!