Juicy Campus Founder Defends His Controversial Web Site

Have you been tackled with any lawsuits from people who were maybe mad about that or are you guys kind of immune to that because it's other people putting it on your site?

Well, you know Section 230 provides very broad immunities for Web site providers like us. And so, no, we really haven't had any legal troubles in that regard. Because, it basically says that we cannot be held liable as the speakers of the content on our site when it's generated by a third party like this.

Where are you looking to take your site in the future -- I mean just this month it's been skyrocketing, the number of posts, the number of campuses that have been jumping on board -- where are you looking to take this?

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We have so many ideas ... I'm so excited. We just completed a huge expansion from 60 campuses to 500. ... It's been a huge past 30 days for us and, you know, just last September we re-launched the Web site with a completely new interface and design, we upgraded our servers; we really just keep expanding the features and the functionality of the site. The next thing for us is a whole new tab where we're moving away from just pure gossip and were opening up a tab called "Rankings." It's going to be a new section of the site and we're not telling anybody what it is except that it's coming out this month, and I think students are really going to enjoy it. I think it'll be huge on college campuses.

OK, do you ever see Juicy Campus going beyond the college campus and maybe having something like Juicy Office or something like that -- do you ever think it will go to another forum beyond the college campus like the workplace?

Maybe. We've certainly registered a lot of other domain names and we've talked about going to offices -- you know, one place we said we'd never go is high school. But, anything else is open ground. To be honest, though, that's a little ways away. We feel like we've got plenty of places we can go with the college audience.

What would you say is one of the funniest posts you've ever read, just randomly looking at your own site?

Oh gosh, I should just have a good canned answer for this. I haven't read it in quite awhile. You know, I always kind of think the posts about me are funny. I think everyone finds the posts about themselves to be the most interesting. Maybe that's just human nature. I love reading that stuff, even when it's mean, if it's cleverly mean, I have to laugh it off.

Well, do you ever feel bad about the posts people are putting up on the site? Sometimes it's mean, but obviously it's what people are talking about -- but do you personally ever feel guilty that you're giving people a forum for that or do you almost feel proud that you are giving people this place to talk about things?

Well, I'll tell you from a personal standpoint, not as a Juicy Campus representative, but you know personally there has been a lot of stuff on Juicy Campus that I've read and I just, personally, find it abhorrent. But I absolutely do not feel guilty -- and I don't think there's any reason for me to feel guilty about providing a forum for speech. What we're doing is kind of amoral. We are just the platform. And I don't think there's anything to feel bad about that.