• by Shankar Gupta , April 3, 2006

The popularity of social networking sites like Facebook.com and MySpace.com has spurred photo-sharing site Webshots to launch its own community site aimed specifically at college students.

Starting Tuesday, all Webshots members who have registered with an ".edu" e-mail address will be brought into the site, dubbed "CollegeLive," which contains individual communities for each academic institution--much like the model competitor Facebook.com uses to keep its site college-focused.

In addition to photo-sharing, the site will also incorporate an event-planning tool, "Evite-lite," which allows students to create profiles for events, upload photos, create polls, and invite lists. After the party, anyone who attended can post photos, or "dig" the party, voting it up, and placing it in the running for the most popular party on campus.

CollegeLive will be monetized at first only by text link ads--although the site is coded to accept IAB-standard ads. Russ Novy, Webshot's director of marketing community, said that students indicated in interviews that they didn't want to see other forms of ads. "They really didn't want to see the usual IAB, network display ads," he said. "They told us 'we're not going to pay, and we're not going to click.'"

The text ads will be self-serve, flat rate placements, and priced so that college students can afford them, Barrett said.

The site will also be monetized by brand partnerships, allowing advertisers to upload their own photos and branded material, and allow students to use them in their event profiles and albums. "We know the brands that will work for the college audience," Novy said. "Event throwers are going to have to invite the brand into their party."