Playboy Goes Social
Trying to appeal to a younger, web-savvy audience, Playboy announced plans to launch Playboy U, a new social networking website along the lines of immensely popular MySpace and Facebook. Playboy U includes the basic features of its competitors, such as the ability to write comments on other users’ profiles and to post photos. But unique to Playboy U is the user base; the site is restricted to college students only, and Playboy U plans to monitor the site to ensure that school faculty, staff, parents and anyone else without a student e-mail address aren’t able to access user profiles. Users can even find events and other information specific to their university while still accessing adult-themed message boards, photos and other content, although nudity is banned.
“It’s a very lucrative market,” said senior media analyst Michael Kelman of the Susquehanna Financial Group. “The college kids, they’re going to be better-educated and have higher disposable incomes. [But] it’s been a very, very tough audience to grab.”
Playboy has been struggling with decreased profits in recent years and hopes Playboy U will give its company a much-needed boost. After posting a $47.6 million loss in 2000, Playboy has slowly recovered as a result of new ventures including a popular cable TV show and a satellite radio channel.