In early beta tests, the website got 2,000 members from 500 colleges.
"It's a very lucrative market," Susquehanna Financial Group Senior Media Analyst Michael Kelman said. "The college kids, they're going to be better-educated and have higher disposable incomes. [But] it's been a very, very tough audience to grab."
Playboy U members can post a personal profile, photos, videos and blogs, and participate in forums and clubs. As on other social-networking sites, members can make "friend" connections. Features of the site include polls, quizzes and special school pages with listings of parties and on-campus events. College journalism and fiction also will be included on the site.
Playboy U will have a tie-in with Playboy's Sirius satellite radio channel. "The Playboy U Radio Show" will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. PDT starting Sept. 5. The weekly program will air profiles of site members, advice segments, campus news and calls from students discussing college life.
The Playboy U site bars nude pictures, but offers mature content including pictures from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's annual "Midsummer Night's Dream" party — where the invitation specifies sleepwear — and message topics including "What Do You Think About Penis Enlargement?" and "How Many People Have You Slept With? To Lie or Not to Lie."
The college-students-only exclusivity and the Playboy cachet impressed Adam Gibson, a 24-year-old public relations major at West Virginia University, who promotes the site on campus.
"They do a really good job at blending in the Playboy lifestyle with the students," Gibson said. "There's a level of exclusivity to it. And I think that keeps it cool."