Paul Schweibinz created the UOKnows website five months ago. He estimates that the website fluctuates between 400 and 1,000 hits depending on the day. (Tess Freeman/Oregon Daily Emerald)
Paul Schweibinz, a 23-year old University alumnus, was having a hard time finding things to do around Eugene’s University community. He clicked and searched through website after website in order to find local concerts, new restaurants and the best bars. An idea came to mind — why doesn’t somebody consolidate all the entertainment information around town into one place? @@http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-schweibinz/36/6/a8@@
Then, a class project assigned to Schweibinz asked him and his group to create a sustainable idea for a business. Schweibinz took his pre-existing website idea and added a coupon side to it, allowing users to enter their phone number and have coupons and deals from nearby restaurants and businesses texted directly to their phone.
Thus, KnowUO was created. @@http://knowuo.com/@@
“There is a disconnect I’ve noticed between the student community and the business community in Eugene,” Schweibinz said. “The real goal is to have something of a guide and a place for students to connect with each other and all that’s around them.”
According to the website, KnowUO is most importantly a more specific coupon and deal distributor similar to Groupon, and a source of entertainment and food news.
“I see it as a homepage for anybody in Eugene,” Schweibinz said. “You look at it in the morning and see what is going on and text a couple of coupons to yourself and your friends for lunch later.”
[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/mia-schauffler/paul-know-uo”]
Schweibinz’s website programmer is his only employee at the moment. Although he believes that his model could produce money one day, at the moment he’s just trying to show local businesses that it could work. To fill KnowUO with content, he encourages community involvement by inviting students to contribute to the site by posting short blog posts, videos and reviews.
“Not everybody can get a journalism job on campus,” Schweibinz said. “And, not everybody wants one. This can also be an opportunity for someone to get their work published — it’s more than just a website.”
University sophomore Casey Pechan met Schweibinz when she was working for DuckTV news, and thought it would be fun to contribute. @@http://www.uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Casey*Pechan@@
“It was another outlet for me to showcase work, and it sounded fun,” Pechan said.
The full site shows upcoming events around Eugene, recent news, weather and coupons for deals around campus neighborhood businesses. Schweibinz wanted to help his on-the-go users and made a mobile-friendly site that shows only the deals and coupons side of KnowUO because creating an app is expensive and pointless for the site’s application.
Although starting the website required out-of-pocket money and a considerable amount of time, Schweibinz hopes to keep expanding not only the websites, but also the locations.
“Hopefully, we can branch out to other schools and other colleges,” he said. “Pac-12 would be a good start, but it’s a big goal. It’s definitely been a learning experience.”