When Publicly Traded Social Networks Flop

• College Tonight (CBEGE) is the social network for college students, which took itself public in a reverse merger, raising $1,639,500 in November 2007.
• The company which came out of the gates hoping to take on Facebook is standing on some thin sticks.
• Since it’s inception, the company has burnt through over $1 million dollars trying to do so.
• In a recent gasp for air, the founder, Zachary Suchin tried to launch another social product for college students called TheQuad.com.
• The founders went on a road trip and hired Lauren Conrad of The Hills (barf), to promote TheQuad brand and tell students nationwide that they finally have a place online to go hangout.
• Maybe they were trying to reach out to the students who hadn’t heard of Facebook, which seems about right according to their traffic numbers. Both properties combined have not been able to pass 15K views a month (according to Comscore reports)
• To make legitimate ad dollars in this town (which is what they are relying on driving revenue with), a site must get to at least 100,000 views a month to even have a chance at making a tiny bit of money.
• The most important thing to check out is their market cap, which is at $5.5M right now. A site with traffic and revenue like they have is not even worth the legal costs of transferring the company into your name.
• This company has no hope in site. Anyone who owns some of the 34 million outstanding shares, it’s time to sell.

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