The Web is a take-no-prisoners business and the war for the hearts and minds of students all over Ireland is now gathering momentum. At least four major players are hoping to serve the student market - campus.ie, oxygen.ie, flunk.net and autonom.ie - despite the increasingly evident signs of a glut.
All these student portals are trying to convince "yoof" that their site is the place to be because of their varying levels of value-added content, which comes in several different forms.
Making his pitch, Padraig Staunton, of campus.ie, delivers the hard sell: "Our key offering is the myLocker feature, which is your personal space. Once you register, you get a free online locker and, within the locker, you get free Web-based email, a personal planner, file storage and access to the `clubs and societies' area."
The business model of these companies is simple: become the de facto gathering point for students, then use that market share to gain premium advertisers. How they achieve that share is the key difference between the sites. Both campus.ie and oxygen.ie claim advertising revenue will ultimately keep them afloat.
"The revenue streams would be advertising and sponsorships," says Staunton. "We have a number of content partners on the site, and Adidas currently sponsor our email service, offering tailored competitions to our users."
Three of the four major sites - campus.ie, oxygen.ie and autonom.ie - launched this year and, since the business model is untested, they are all sailing uncharted and potentially very choppy waters. Of course, the upside is the promise of bounty which traditionally goes to the valiant, pioneering explorer.
However, with a student population of around 160,000 in Ireland, there is really only room for two portals, Staunton suggests. He appears confident that campus.ie will be one of them after any impending shake-up. "It's difficult to say how many student portal sites the market can support; they all seem to be quite different. There are a few magazine-type sites, offering some media-type stunts. Interesting, but definitely different to what we offer," he says.
The Bank of Ireland's autonom.ie site is the only one that actually has something to sell, namely accounts and services with the bank itself. This also means that the success of autonom.ie can be judged very easily by assessing the number of new accounts opened by visitors. If autonom.ie was to take 10 per cent of its annual turnover of visitors and turn those into new Bank of Ireland customers, then that would be a very respectable result.
Oxygen.ie's Cara Giveny takes a pragmatic approach to the Bank of Ireland site. "Autonom.ie is just one of a number of student sites out there. Generally, we think the more sites the better, because it keeps us competitive. It keeps everyone competitive," she says.
Though oxygen.ie is quite a recent addition to the market, Giveny suggests that getting visitors onto the site has not been a problem. "Oxygen has been around since April, and we've actually had a huge response from students. We can't even believe how fast it's growing ourselves - it took us quite by surprise. At the moment, we have 20,000 registered members, which is just spectacular," she says.
So what do these portals offer in an effort to attract the student grant, so to speak? The services provided to students, and how they are targeted and delivered, are of vital importance, according to Staunton. "Customisation is the key," he says.
He then elaborates on the level of customisation campus.ie provides. "The website customises to 39 different colleges, so when someone clicks a link, the system will send them to the content most appropriate to their college. Therefore we can offer local information and can deliver everything customised to each of the colleges."
Both autonom.ie and oxygen.ie are running major competitions giving students the chance to live rent-free for a year. The autonom.ie site is offering three students a prize worth £3,000 to cover the cost of their accommodation for a year, while oxygen.ie has gone for a more technological package, with five students winning a rent-free place in the oxygen.ie Webbed-up house. As in Big Brother, Web cameras will track the students' progress 24/7 on the site.
According to Giveny, "No. 54", as it is known, is "slightly different to a normal student flat, though, in that we're hosting shows which the students themselves are actually presenting. They're talking to the cameras, they're generating a lot of interaction, with phone-in shows and things like that".
As far as participation in these types of competition go, oxygen.ie has had no problems attracting interest in its No. 54 project. "It was difficult to choose people for No. 54, though it wasn't difficult to find them, because we had a massive response to the invitation for housemates," she says. "I think when everyone heard about Big Brother, they were especially keen to take part, and, of course, people love to get free rent. Actually, the people that we did find are just great: everybody was very outgoing, very interesting, very funny and bright," she says.
Since so many students now have mobile phones, SMS is now very relevant to the target market of the portals. Oxygen.ie offers free SMS messaging on its site as long as the students register first, and, again, the registration details provide added information for the marketing department.
One of the major services provided to students by both flunk.net and campus.ie is campus news from colleges. Since the portals are relying on the good will of each college, coverage tends to be patchy, with notably more prolific contributions from certain areas of the country.
Campus.ie has a member of staff charged with news gathering. "Our journalist has been talking to various students' unions with regard to issues within the colleges, and the feelings have been good, and the reporting on those stories has been good," says Staunton.
With many college computer system managers blocking access to Web-based email services such as Hotmail and Yahoo!, Staunton sees a gap in the market for campus.ie to fill.
"Most other Web email companies deliver their service through the United States, which means the message has to cross the Atlantic and then come back again, just for you to read or send an email. Ours is being hosted in Europe, which is an important issue for speed and download time within the colleges, especially considering [that] the bandwidth within college would already be under heavy strain."
The venture capital secured by the portal sites is unlikely to cater for more than two or three years of operation before some sort of profit is expected. This means that the operators of these sites are going to be putting a large amount of their budget into marketing. This has already become apparent as the sites battle it out on the air waves and on the pages of student magazines.
The future will surely hold surprises, both for visitors to this new breed of website and for those involved in the portals themselves. As long as students are getting a service from these business ventures and there is the promise of future profits for those behind the sites, then everyone will be happy. At least for now.