KELSEY MAYS
Living Editor
For freshman Adam Cargioli, cyberspace is his backyard turf. The Noblesville, Ind.-native laughs as he recounts memories of the Net.
“I can’t remember anything past eighth grade,” Cargioli said of his early days online. “I only remember high school. Everything else is in a file cabinet in the fourth-floor basement of my mind.”
Homestarrunner.com is apparently far from that basement. It’s one of Cargioli’s favorite Web sites these days. The site has a cartoon backdrop and features short animated clips, games and videos. It updates every Monday, Cargioli said.
“It’s a cartoon site you can watch with your little brother, as opposed to the nasty Web toons that your little brother can’t watch,” he said. “I’ve been checking it out since last year.”
Freshman Jaime Wilson has been a Homestarrunner fan for twice as long, but she said that’s a rare break from her normal routine.
“I’m mostly just into e-mail and Facebook,” Wilson said.
Wilson and Cargioli are just a few of many Pepperdine students who spend time online at niche sites beyond the realm of Google, MSN and other high-traffic domains. Together with thousands of other users across the country, they are creating word-of-mouth buzz that turns previously obscure sites into ultra-hip hotspots among college-age individuals.
Atlanta-based Homestarrunner be-gan in 1999. Now it gets about 2,700 visitors a day and is linked from more than 1,200 other Web sites, according to Alexa Internet, Inc., an online information service in conjunction with Amazon.com.
It’s one of many sites that are popular among Pepperdine students. Despite the variety of these sites, one thing is certain: The hot list is always changing. There is even waning interest among some toward popular mainstays such as Facebook.com.
“We all know about Facebook,” Cargioli said. “Who cares?”
Others, such as sophomore Sandra Smith, are more outspoken in their dislike.
“I don’t know many people who are really into Facebook,” Smith said. “It’s a thing to get to know people on campus but not really much beyond that.”
Smith said she likes MySpace.com, a rival to Facebook that offers multimedia options such as music and short videos. She enjoys the social aspect of the Internet – a common thread with her sisters back home, she said, as well as many other Pepperdine women.
Forrester Research, a business and technology research company, reports that men spend slightly more time online than women, but twice as much time gaming, according to ClickZ Network, an online marketing consultancy service. The study found that women spend more time instant messaging, however.
“I frequent Pogo.com and Addicting-games.com,” senior Mike Nevarez said. “It’s basically something to do between classes. You get out of one and have 10 minutes, a half-hour at most. You go online to play some games (and) waste time between classes. By my experience, I’ve seen a lot more guys playing games than girls.”
Sophomore Michael Wang agreed.
“Guys surf more to kill time and be entertained,” Wang said. “I’m not an expert at this, but I would believe that guys are more stimulus-based, and girls are more personal-interaction based.”
In any case, both genders of college students find cyberspace to be their stomping grounds. Three-fourths of the 27 million 18- to 24-year-olds in the country have Internet access, according to a 2004 Nielsen/Netratings study. The group is also a burgeoning demographic for mobile online technology, such as Internet-capable cell phones. Certain mobile online categories are used by as much as 24 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds, according to ClickZ Network. And ZDNet, a technology news service of CNET, reported that online banking is highest among the same segment.
At Pepperdine, every on-campus student gets access to a T3 high-speed connection.
Alumnus and manager of the campus computer store Matthew Semerau said such access has not always been the case.
“When I came (to Pepper-dine) in the 1997-1998 school year, we had dial-up,” Semerau said. “In every room, you’d use the phone line to get Internet … I didn’t spend a lot of time online back then.”
Today’s students have online access that is multiple times faster, which may have had a part to play in the rise of niche sites.
These sites don’t necessarily signal the fall of major hubs, though. If
anything, domains like Google and MSN are as healthy as ever.
Perhaps the best illustration comes from Wang, as he described his own online ha-bits.
“I like e-baumsworld, ifilm and Col-legehumor,” he said. “But if I had to pick a favorite site that I spend the most time on, it would be Google News.”
11-03-2005
