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Network of communities online
By JUDSON BROWN, Staff Writer
Wednesday,
December 20, 2000 -- (HADLEY) -
eCommunityGuide.Com, a network of community Web sites, is
now a reality.
The
enterprise planned last year by undergraduate and graduate
business students at the University of Massachusetts was
activated Friday for Amherst, Hatfield, Hadley, Northampton
and Southampton.
The community
sites can be accessed through the main domain name or
individually by typing in the community name followed by
guide.com, as in Amherstguide.com.
The group
expects to add Web sites for Sunderland, Belchertown,
Easthampton and Deerfield early next year.
The Hadley
site is a continuation of Hadleyonline.com which Peter
Gelinas, co-founder and president of eCommunityGuide.Com,
established three years ago when he was a student at Hopkins
Academy.
Gelinas, who
also owns a Web design and hosting business Dot.Inc Solutions, is
a junior at UMass. Other members of the company include
co-founder Josh Greenwald, a second-year student at the
university's Isenberg School of Management; John Kostek, a
junior business student; Dan Petruzella, a first-year MBA
student; and Joseph Klement, a second-year MBA student.
Their
business plan won second place among some 24 entries in a
competition last year by the Five College Entrepreneur Club, a
project sponsored by Mass Ventures, a local venture
development firm. Their prize was $2,500, a consultation with
Mass Ventures' chief financial officer and vice president for
business development Joseph Steig, and some free legal advice.
Steig said
the plan stood out for being well written. He said that given
strong interest in communities everywhere to develop Web
sites, the group has a well thought out template or
"standardized tool set" that may prove salable in many
locales. Steig also said that the track record of
Hadleyonline.com was very strong.
Gelinas says
the Hadley Web site has often attracted as many as 2,500
visits a week in a town of 4,400 people.
Gelinas said
he is financing the company at present out of income he has
earned from his Web business. There is a "higher bar" dot.coms
have to clear to get funding than there was even six months
ago when investors began to pull back from many early stage
Internet companies, Steig said.
Greenwald
said the group is applying for a $20,000 grant from the
National Collegial Investors and Innovators Alliance.
Gelinas said
his group plans eventually to develop community sites
throughout New England. Steig said it is going to "require a
lot of scale" for them to make money in a market where there
is cut-throat competition for local advertising dollars.
eCommunityGuide.com has "strategic partnerships" with several
other Internet enterprises, including GazetteNET, the on-line
news and information service of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Headlines from GazetteNETstories are posted daily on the
eCommunityGuide.Com sites allowing users of the channels to
click directly into the GazetteNET site to read the stories.
Another
aspect of this partnership now under discussion is that
GazetteNET users may be linked to on-line "bulletin boards"
which are a feature of the eCommunityGuide.com sites.
This will
obviate the need for GazetteNET to continue to manage its own
bulletin board, explained director Gerard LeBlanc.
Bulletin
boards allow users to post messages to which other users can
reply, creating what is known as "threaded conversations."
eCommunityGuide.Com also has partnerships with SportSpot.Com
and Zone5Gardening.Com, two regional Web sites.
The
eCommunityGuide.com sites include interactive event calendars
that can be searched and to which users can add their events.
The sites have internal links, called channels, on topics
ranging from local business listings to entertainment, plus
external links to other regional Web pages.
Regular
columns by local experts on topics such as gardening and pet
care are planned to enrich the content of the sites.
Interactive
features such as e-mail directories and a "digital post card"
feature are being planned.
Although
focused on communities, the sites are not aimed at providing
local municipal government information on-line or providing
links to local government.
Gelinas said
the sites will be financed through advertising, mainly through
enhanced business listings, with a limited amount of banner
advertising.
Advertising
is another area where GazetteNET and eCommunityGuide.com are
considering a collaboration, with the possibility of an
arrangement that would allow ads to be sold on both sites
simultaneously.
The
eCommunuityGuide.com sites join other sites on the Internet
geared to the local area or specific local communities,
including various Web pages sponsored by local chambers of
commerce and MassLive, which is affiliated with the
Springfield newspapers.
LeBlanc noted
that the World Wide Web is proving to be in many ways more
useful as a "local tool" of communication and commerce than as
a "global tool."
He said there
is healthy competition between community Web sites at present.
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