Background /
Objective
This project was inspired by the
prevalence of drinking in college students throughout the United States. In relation to the internet, sites such as
TuckerMax.com have become wildly popular among teens while sites such as
AlcoholEdu have become the most popularized attempt to educated college
students about alcohol. TuckerMax.com is
popular because it fulfills a niche that nobody has yet to be completely
explored: a sort of ‘male empowerment’
niche that has become increasingly popular in the last few years. Spike TV is now the “network for men,” the
majority of beer and burger commercials are geared towards being ‘manly,’ and
Tucker Max’s book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, was in the New York
Times’ bestseller’s list for more than a month.
As such, it is apparent there is a large demand for strongly
male-oriented content. At the same time,
there is also a need among the prevalent college drinking atmosphere for
education about alcohol. Thus, this
website will appeal to the demand for male-oriented content with stories and
descriptions of drinking games, while at the same time containing vital
information about alcohol.
- It is difficult to get an accurate statistic on how many
college students drink. Nearly all of
this information is from surveys, and the numbers range from 50-80%. This is because there is no standard
definition on what “drinking” or “binge drinking” are. Whatever the number is, it is impossible to
argue the fact that drinking is prevalent in college students and many of those
college students who drink are not completely educated about alcohol.
- Lots of what college students know about booze is hearsay
(ex: beer before liquor, never been
sicker, liquor before beer, you’re in the clear – has some PARTIAL truth, but
…).
- We’ve all taken care of a friend who’s had too much to
drink. When does someone need to go to
the hospital?
-----------------------------
Description of
Main Structure of Site
The five
main portions of the website are: Home, The Message Board, Drinking Games,
Booze: the Facts, and Stories. These
links are all on the left-hand side of the website and allow easy navigation
between the pages.
The Message
Board is a forum where users can actively participate in the website. Users can make suggestions about the site and
discuss whatever topics they so choose.
Drinking
Games is organized in a user-friendly easy-to-use table, which directly
compares the various drinking games and allows users to click on a drinking
game to get a detailed description of any game and its rules and variations.
Booze: the
Facts contains links to pages about BAC (blood alcohol content), an overview of
alcohol, and a variety of other education pages about alcohol.
Stories
contains links to user-written stories, and links to outside stories about
alcohol that are entertaining.
There are also links in the entertainment sections allowing
users to easily traverse to directly-related educational topics.
Development Costs
The development cost of the website
will be very small, if anything at all, since the entire website is designed by
the author. The research and content is
developed by the author, so the development cost is simply how much time the
author can invest in the website.
-----------------------------
Funding
The website will need funding if it
becomes popular, as the author would have to pay for a higher allocation of
bandwidth from whoever is hosting the website.
However, with this popularity, advertising will be used to fund the
hosting cost. Specifically, ads geared
towards strongly male-oriented content: alcohol, power tools, bars,
scantily-clad females, etc.
One of the biggest problems with
funding, if and when the site becomes popular, is that many companies will not
want to put their name on a site associated with drinking and drinking
games. Coors beer refuses to sponsor
anything beer pong or drinking-game related, because their policy is drinking
games lead to over-consumption of their product. Many corporate sponsors will have the same sort
of fear putting their name on this website, even if it does have education
content.
-----------------------------
Maintenance
The majority of the website will
remain the same, as information on alcohol and rules of drinking games should
by and large remain unchanged. Submitted
stories will have to be reviewed, and the best ones inserted onto the
website. Apart from that, the time and
effort required to maintain the website should be relatively low.
Should the website become popular,
I will need to hire people to manage the message board and the submitted
stories. The maintenance and upkeep of
the main page can be done by me.
-----------------------------
Entering the
Market
Since the
website is geared towards college students, it will enter the market through
Facebook, Myspace, and word of mouth.
All of these are free, and extremely easy to advertise through. They also have the benefit of the snowball
effect, that is to say, the more people use and like the website, the more they
tell their friends through Facebook / Myspace / word of mouth.
last edited: Andrew Schroeder, 06/05/2008
