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Now in the final weeks of the Spring semester for most colleges and universities, the party life has been livened up a bit with the rising popularity of the new playlist sharing site, FratMusic.com. College students on campus’s throughout the country have embraced the resource, a live melting pot of party playlists that lets users vote which playlist they think is “hot”. Since the site took off, anyone looking to get up to date with todays hit party music has been able to instantly stream the music through a widget by MixPod.com placed on the FratMusic site.

FratMusic.com growth in 2010 according to Google Trends

MixPod is an already established playlist sharing site, but this niche implementation of their widget is the most popular that I’ve seen anywhere. This certainly makes sense considering that all college students need to be connected to the internet today, and browsing the web with a hot playlist has made listening to music via the internet even better. Each day there are new playlists added to the site, from just about every type of institution that you can think of, and the new playlists are voted on, with the most popular playlists making it to the homepage.

FratMusic functions seamlessly and this has helped  keep their user numbers growing steadily. The music stream is very reliable with no interruptions and each playlist is categorized so that finding a hot playlist is always easy to find. To add to the site’s growth, each page has a Facebook “Share” button that allows anyone to instantly share a playlist with friends on Facebook. Overall, FratMusic is the product of great collaboration between the web apps of MixPod and Facebook, and the power of crowd-sourcing via college students. I hope you enjoy this site, it has enormous potential.

When taking risks such as looking to invest in a new technology, making a move that will effect your day to day operations, or any other major change in your business, one of the most overlooked variables is opportunity cost. It’s important to factor in the opportunity cost of any business decision because it can reflect additional expenses onto the change that would otherwise be unnoticed, and may effect the decision overall. The most basic way to calculate opportunity cost is to understand the gains you will no longer acquire, that were once attained through your old business methods. Here are a few examples to think about:

• An EMT arrives at the scene of a medical emergency and decides that the patient requires medical attention immediately in order to stay alive, and transporting the patient via ground would not be sufficient. The opportunity cost would be utilizing the medevac flight crew to transport the patient safely so that they live, rather normally transporting the patient via ambulance.
• In a college basketball game, a team that is down a couple points in the final minute often fouls the leading team for the opportunity to score by having the ball in their possession again. By fouling the leading team, the opportunity cost is the points that the leading team can potentially acquire with free throws.
• A worker decides to live in the suburbs and work in a city. The worker’s opportunity (living in the suburbs, away from work) cost is having to commute to and from work each workday.

If you need me to be more clear or specific on anything, feel free to comment below.