E-Biz hits C-Town

By Owen Perry

If you watched the Superbowl this year, or more specifically the commercials, you were probably aware that the majority of ads were for internet companies.

It is clear that business is conducted more and more over the internet everyday, and many people are making a quick million with clever ideas for selling things on a computer screen. It is no wonder then that dot-com companies are popping up everywhere. Ithaca is no exception. Fueled by the needs of college students two e-businesses have set up shop in Ithaca. They are Limespot.com, and Nightfunk.com, and both seek to make the college students life a little easier (and maybe make a little money along the way).

Limespot.com

At the beginning of the semester, every bulletin board in Williams Hall had a poster with a bright green lime on and the words "Limespot.com" on it. Limespot is primarily an internet textbook store, but is currently in the process of becoming the "largest regionalized student portal on the internet," says co-founder Duke Chung. It is headquartered in Ithaca, on Dryden Road. Limespot's first service is a comprehensive textbook price comparison, which allows students to search the top five online textbook companies at once, and provides the best textbook package based on prices and availability, says Chung. This allows students to possibly avoid checking each of the five sites for the best price, which often beats the prices of campus bookstores.

Limespot's current textbook comparison system lets students search for textbooks by course, title, author, or ISBN (the number under the barcode).

However, Limespot also provides a listing of events. According to the website, it is a student's source for timely information about events, parties, concerts, movie listings, menus listings, and other activities in the general interest of college students.

The company has also added a feature that allows students to rate the events on their campus and post opinions and information about them on the site. This will allow, Limespot claims, the student to know everything about a party before he or she even attends it. Everyone will be able to compare frat parties at Cornell by looking at just how many kegs and how much the cover charge is at each one, or read others' opinions on bands to decide which club to go to on Saturday night.

Limespot.com was started in the summer of 1999 by Duke Chung, currently a senior Operations Research & Industrial Engineering major at Cornell, and David Huang, who is a student at the University of Maryland.

"Ithaca is a great place to start an internet business. Cornell serves as an incubator for students with tremendous talent and motivation," Chung says.

Since, it's incorporation in the summer of 1999, Limespot has grown to include eight general partners--five Cornell students, two Harvard students and one University of Maryland student. The company has also expanded to16 total employees with more than 30 affiliates at various colleges nationwide.

NightFunk.com

With the tagline, "What are you doing tonight?" and sporting pictures of "the Funkmaster," Nightfunk prides itself as a being "the nation's premier local entertainment guide for college students."

Much like Limespot, Nightfunk specializes in letting the students on campuses throughout the United States know what's going on in their communities. But unlike Limespot, has more features, and has a larger network of affiliates on many campuses. Nightfunk was started about two years ago in Ithaca and is now also located on Dryden road in Collegetown. Those seeking information on when and where campus parties are, what the bar specials and entertainment are, which movies are in theaters, local concerts, college sporting events, and for those studious types out there who came to college to learn, the site also shares academic events. Anyone can post events, which can provide free publicity for any function.

Other features allow the surfer to kill time while waiting for the events to happen. Nightfunk is complete with weather reports, movie and music reviews, horoscopes, online polls, contests, and always vital chat rooms. "Nightfunk.com is quality because it lists all the stuff going on in the Ithaca area as well as TV listings and things going on here at the college. If you're ever looking for something to do, you can find it there," said Ithaca College freshman Emily Rindone who at least glances at Nightfunk before the weekend.

Nightfunk has also begun a charity program, which according to the site will donate a dollar to a charity of one's choice for every person that he or she signs up to be a member of Nightfunk--with a minimum of 10 memberships. Sign-up sheets can be obtained on the website by clicking on the "dough-nation" button.

Owen Perry is a freshman at Ithaca College.