For a short but eventful 18 months, the college gossip Web site JuicyCampus starred as the Internet’s college message board of questionable taste, but the site called it quits last week.
Citing too little ad revenue to pay the JuicyCampus staff of 20, site creator and executive Matt Ivester said in a statement, “JuicyCampus’ exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn.”
From public humiliation to death threats, posts on the site from anonymous students minced no words and sparked mass media buzz several times when the gossip turned headline-worthy. JuicyCampus may have gone under, but for Internet gossip enthusiasts, the fun isn’t over.
Wesleyan University freshman Peter Frank bought rights for JuicyCampus traffic and is redirecting visitors to his site, the Anonymous Confession Board, at CollegeACB.com.
“I e-mailed them the night I realized they were going under, and they quoted me on a price for two months,” Frank wrote in an e-mail. “I purchased the rights for two months of their traffic for five figures.”
Facing the same economy in which JuicyCampus didn’t survive, Frank said the ACB is more likely to thrive, partially because of his encouragement of “discussion,” and a user-moderation button, allowing users to call the webmaster’s immediate attention to potentially threatening or libelous posts.
“We believe that we have much lower overhead than did JuicyCampus. Additionally, we intend to maintain an image that advertisers will be proud to be seen on,” Frank wrote. “The combination, we believe, will yield higher margins between cost and revenue.”
Posts on the ACB are already following the model left by JuicyCampus, with more focus on derogatory language, less on discussion.
“I think the people going on (these sites) aren’t going for good reasons, they’re only going on there to trash-talk,” said University sophomore Lee Anne Denyer. “It would be cool to have a site where students could talk about classes; that would be more productive, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Kyu Ho Youm, University media law professor, said that although it is legal for Web sites to publish defamatory statements made by anonymous third parties, advertisers might shy away from controversial content.
“Advertisers are money-oriented, but they’re also thinking of the message they might be sending by being so closely associated with JuicyCampus,” he said. “It’s a reality check for JuicyCampus on the pushing-the-envelope approach.”
Although sites such as JuicyCampus and the ACB are legally protected, if their content defames or libels someone, the site may face litigation.
“People who are posting salacious, titillating messages are abusing the anonymity,” Youm said. “People are asking, how far can we go in allowing the freedom of cyber speech? More and more people are wondering if we have gone too far.”
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