Free booze

The economy may be tanking, but here's one website that's growing by promoting places to get tanked for free, myopenbar.com. The site is mainly focused on promotional events at Manhattan bars, but also has listings for five other major cities - LA, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago and Honolulu. It's quite a success story.

It started with Mr. Granik, then a broke musician living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who simply forwarded text messages to his friends about various open bars around town. Demand grew, so he launched a crude Web site that Mr. Fried, a Web designer he had met through a friend’s band, helped to fine-tune. Within six months, 3,000 people had signed up for weekly e-mail blasts. By mid-2006, there were 18,000 subscribers, and a lot more places offering open bar nights.

They now have 30,000 subscribers in New York alone, employ 30 people and the site is profitable between the advertising and the consulting fees they get for organizing promotions. I have a feeling they're going to keep growing as long as the economy remains trashed.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]