In its brief life, online college burn book JuicyCampus won notoriety and lawsuits for letting students diss their campuses and classmates. Now it's going out of business. With the help of fancy Hollywood flacks!

Matt Ivester, the founder of JuicyCampus, put out a press release blaming his site's closure, planned for Thursday, on "historically difficult economic times" which have wiped out onine advertising budgets and venture-capital funding. And yet he found enough money to pay a team at BWR Public Relations, a Los Angeles PR firm known mostly for representing celebrities, to announce JuicyCampus's economic straits. We smell some kind of desperate publicity stunt to draw out white-knight investors — but what kind of fool would put money into a startup which is burning cash so obviously, right up to the end?

From: Emily Davis
Date: Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:33 PM
Subject: JUICYCAMPUS COMES TO AN END
To:
Cc: Steven Wilson, Hayley Scheck, Ron Hofmann, Farial Awan

B|W|R Public Relations

5700 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 550, Los Angeles, California 90036

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 4, 2009

JUICYCAMPUS COMES TO AN END

Open Letter From JuicyCampus Founder

Juicy Campers,

What a wild ride this has been! In the past year and a half, JuicyCampus has become synonymous with college gossip, and is more popular than I could have ever expected. We've expanded to more than 500 campuses across the US, and have more than a million unique visitors coming to the site every month. It's clear that we have provided a platform that students have found interesting, entertaining, and fun.

Unfortunately, even with great traffic and strong user loyalty, a business can't survive and grow without a steady stream of revenue to support it. In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved. JuicyCampus' exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn, and as a result, we are closing down the site as of Feb. 5, 2009.

On behalf of everyone here at JuicyCampus, I would like to thank all of our users for reading, contributing to, and telling your friends about the site. And I'd like to thank everyone who has engaged in meaningful discussion about online privacy and internet censorship. JuicyCampus has raised issues that have passionate advocates on both sides, and I hope that dialogue will continue. While there are parts of JuicyCampus that none of us will miss – the mean-spirited posts and personal attacks – it has also been a place for the fun, lighthearted gossip of college life. I hope that is how it is remembered.

Keep it Juicy,

Matt Ivester

Founder & CEO, JuicyCampus.com

Los Angeles, CA

February 4, 2009

Media Contact:

Steven Wilson/Hayley Scheck
B|W|R Public Relations

Emily Davis
B|W|R Public Relations
5700 Wilshire Blvd
Suite 550
Los Angeles, CA 90036