Website promotes 'wicked' parties

How do you link the 250,000 college students living in the greater Boston area? This was the social challenge that three MIT students recently tackled. MIT sophomores and best friends Arun Agarwal, Steve Fredette and Paul Wehner began to build a website last January that would become WickedParty.com - an online nightlife guide to college students in the greater Boston area.

Almost a year later, their site is up and running, and the trio has incorporated their business. Now, Agarwal, Fredette and Wehner are the presidents of Awf Beat, Inc. (pronounced off beat; the name of their company is actually an acronym derived from the first letters of their last names.)

Like any good businessmen, the three saw a market and seized it. "All you hear about when you decide to go to school in Boston, is how great the social scene is and what an amazing 'college town' it is," Agarwal said. "But there just isn't a lot of mingling between the schools because there has never been an infrastructure for it. We decided to create a site that would tie the city together socially."

The website generates an income from club promotion, although the creators hope to make their real money through selling advertising on the site.

Since the website's launch a month half of ago, the company has started a strong public relations campaign to spread word of the website, and employs 42 promoters at 15 schools.

Mike Decker, a freshman at Boston University, promotes WickedParty.com at his school. "It's just a matter of getting the [website's] name out there, then people will start coming to the parties," he said.

The website features college party listings, club events and shows in Boston, as well as cheap restaurant listings, movie schedules, and columns written by students.

The website also allows students to post personal profiles to meet other students in the area.

"The idea is that you can not only find out what's going on at the other schools, but you can network and meet people using their profiles," said Fredette, who manages many of the technical aspects of the site.

Joining the WickedParty.com e-mail list enables students to receive information on upcoming events, including concerts, fraternity parties, and club nights -- WickedParty's latest venture. At these events students can put their names on a WickedParty guest list through their school's promoter and receive reduced admission to the club that night.

WickedParty.com has hosted three club nights so far, none of which have been terribly successful, according to Decker. "The first two were at a bar called Who's On First," he said. "The bar was difficult to work with and the turnout was bad."

Organizers say students can put their names on a guest list through their school's promoter and pay a reduced admission to the club. However, one student who attended the Halloween party at Avalon said that the event did not meet expectations.

"It just seemed really unorganized," junior Julie Burstein said. "There were no guest lists like they had said there would be; and inside the club, you couldn't tell which people were college students and which weren't. It defeated the purpose of going."

But organizers expect the next party -- a beach bash on Nov. 20 at Avalon -- to be more successful. "This time [the promoters] have plenty of time to advertise, and it will be much more organized," he said.

WickedParty.com has helped introduced its employees to other enthusiastic partygoers.

"I hang out with WickedParty.com people all the time," sophomore and promoter Dan Weinbeck said. "I love that every person I work with is as outgoing and social as I am."

But organizers recognize that they still have work to do to make the website successful.

"Right now, it's just about gaining clout," Agarwal said.

"You have to remember that we're college students," the computer science and electrical engineering double-major said. "We have classes and a lot of other stuff going on, too."