www.CollegeMedium.com: Craigslist for Students?
April 16, 2006 (PRLEAP.COM) Technology News
“The numerous ‘For Sale’ and ‘Roommate Needed’ signs that flood student centers indicate that online sites such as Ebay and Craigslist do not cater well to students,” said Emmanuel Azih, a recent graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and co-founder of College Medium LLC. “The website takes the physical message boards you find randomly sprinkled around college campuses and transfers them to an online center for the individual schools.”CollegeMedium.com is an innovative communication network designed to consolidate all the information, sorted by school, which would otherwise be posted on message boards around campus. What sets Collegemedium.com apart from other classified sites are the user restrictions, which are specifically tailored to suit college students. Sellers are restricted to college students, while there are no restrictions on buyers. Anyone can post available jobs or housing on Collegemedium.com, however only college students can browse through and respond to such listings. In addition, only college students can post roommate information or search for roommates. These restrictions were put in place to ensure that the site maintains its absolute dedication to college students. The service is free of charge for all users, and is available to over 2000 universities and colleges in the United States of America.
“As it stands right now, should a college student want to find a roommate who attends his or her school, that individual is limited to the school paper, if available, or message boards located sporadically throughout the college campus,” said Christopher White, a former Georgia State student and co-founder of the company. “It is hard to believe that there is no quick way for students to find roommates in their own schools.”
Collegemedium.com also provides an efficient way for students who find misplaced items to return them to the rightful owners. “The main reason misplaced items are never returned is not because people are unethical, but because there is no convenient way for the finder to alert the owner of the item,” notes White. “If the item makes it to a lost and found box—one of the hundreds on campus—it is destined to sit there forever. The Site provides a central avenue for such items to be posted and subsequently recovered.”
On CollegeMedium.com, users can search for items—goods, jobs or housing—available in their school, in other schools in their area, or in their state. The individual users control the transactions; they decide when, where, and how transactions occur, as all information is displayed anonymously on the site. Another unique feature of the site is the alert system, which accelerates communication between users. For instance, when an employer posts a job on CollegeMedium and a student shows interest in that job, the employer can elect to be notified via e-mail or a text message to their cell phone, eliminating the need for him or her to periodically log-in to check on the status of a posting. The students, housing providers and other buyers can also choose to be alerted when individuals respond to their messages or postings, thus accelerating the pace of all transactions.
“A key objective of CollegeMedium.com is to connect students who are willing to sell items with people who are willing to buy them,” continued Emmanuel Azih. “Other posting sites are so unorganized; you may be buying an item from someone thousands of miles away, and trying to find a seller in your school is like looking for a needle in a haystack. On CollegeMedium.com, you can look for items in your school, send a message to the seller, receive a text-message immediately when the seller responds, and arrange to meet at a location convenient to both parties.”
Ironically, that physical location may turn out to be the student center. At least they are still good for something.
About College Medium LLC
College Medium LLC, based out of Atlanta, GA, owns and operates the website located at www.collegemedium.com. The original idea was conceived in January 2005 and the website was launched on April 14th 2006. The site is dedicated to providing a network for College Students to buy and sell items, find roommates, jobs, and housing. The service is available to over 2000 universities and colleges in the United States of America.