Full story published in The Chronical of Education's "Wired Campus" blog, Casey Fabris, March 3, 2015
Once upon a time, Facebook was reserved for college students only. A new social network is trying to reboot that idea, with a college-only service called Friendsy.
The service is the creation of two Princeton University undergraduates, Michael Pinsky and Vaidhy Murti, who hope to help facilitate connections among college students who might otherwise never meet.
“It’s kind of nice and reassuring to know that there’s a network of people just like you out there who are trying to meet other people and who are trying to branch out,” Mr. Pinsky said.
The service has two main features: connect and chitchat. With connect, students can swipe through different profiles and indicate one of three relationships they’d like to have with a person: friendship, hookup, or date. Users can apply filters—looking to connect only with women or only with, say, students in their own college or only within their academic program. The chitchat feature randomly pairs up people who then receive an icebreaker prompt—usually a light or silly question, like “cats or dogs?”—and are invited to chat. If they choose to, the users can reveal their identities to each other.
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