Not bad for a venture hatched at a university Entrepreneur Club meeting last spring.

By June, Ostrow, 21, and Klug, 24, had developed Mindsay, which attracts teens and young adults by allowing them to create their own Web journals, or Web logs, without any prior knowledge of Web building.

Users can post their thoughts by AOL Instant Messenger—a unique, simple-to-use feature.

Mindsay also offers pages like “bored?”, which urges members to take freshly updated quizzes, browse for new bloggers and join blogging games.

Mindsay user DJ Chuang, a 37-year-old Web programmer for the American Bible Society, is a committed fan. He said he maintains about five blog accounts, but refers to Mindsay as his Instant Journal.

Reaching Out to Potential Investors

Ostrow and Klug hope that their virtual community will attract investors and allow them to build partnerships with online news organizations. Mindsay doesn’t bank on advertisements, nor does it charge users for its services.

Since Mindsay organizes and connects its users by location and interests, it could channel target audiences to existing news sites, Ostrow said. He’s hoping the youthfulness of the site’s users –and their penchant for online shopping --will be attractive to news operations that have lost younger readers.

College students and teen-agers spent about $6.2 billion online in 2003, according to Jupiter Research.

Scott Bosley, executive director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, called the site impressive, adding that Web logs in general are an “important part of the media mix.” But he declined to comment on how successful Ostrow and Klug might be in their quest to partner with older media operations.

“The question is going to be how important [blogs are] going to be long term,” Bosley said.

Already, one newspaper is taking advantage of Mindsay’s networking services. Editors of The Terrapin Times, a student-run newspaper at the University of Maryland, link the newspaper’s online version to Mindsay and use it as a forum for readers to post and discuss current events.

This helps the paper “encourage more interaction among The Terrapin Times staff and our readers,” managing editor and university student Francisco Gonzalez wrote in an e-mail.

Blogs Attract Unique Market

Blogging emerged on the Internet in the mid-1990s. Today, hundreds of thousands of blogs exist globally, ranging from hard news accounts on politics to diary rants on school and relationships, wrote blogger and Weblog historian Rebecca Blood on her own Web site.

While some people remain skeptical of using blogs as more than public journals, many online business experts expect blogs to grow in importance.

Blogs attract a variety of users with their easy-to-use format that allows anyone with Internet access and an idea to become a publisher— no editor, HTML or pricey server needed. However, in the newspaper business, there’s debate over their value, and whether they’re worth the risk of incurring legal liability for inaccurate or libelous statements.

Premium Subcriptions Considered

As Klug and Ostrow prepare to talk to potential investors, they are also surveying their members’ reactions to premium accounts that would cost no more than $5 a month. Perched amid homework papers, empty glasses and a stereo in his campus apartment in College Park, Ostrow scans preliminary survey results with approval.

Eight out of 39 people who responded said they would pay for a 10 MB image gallery, a potential component of the premium accounts.

Even though Mindsay has yet to profit, the pair isn't struggling. They had only invested “a couple thousand” dollars in the venture, Klug said. The partners saved by using Klug’s personal server and by designing and programming the site themselves, with the help of Klug's girlfriend, graphics designer Jennifer Lee.

They launched with about 300 people ready to sign up, who had heard of the site through word-of-mouth.

“We know how to operate off almost nothing,” Ostrow said.

Last summer, Klug programmed the site while Ostrow managed the content and Lee structured the layout. The three squeezed into Klug’s Silver Spring apartment, and armed with plenty of caffeine, worked on the Web site in between their day jobs.

 Now, months after an October redesign, the partners’ schedules are still tight, their social lives are waning, and Ostrow said his grades are suffering.

What makes it all worthwhile?

“It’s the money down the road. We hope very much to make money off this,” Klug said. “It’s the lure of things to come.”