Activities abound. Friends sometimes don’t.
Venn is a mobile social media platform that fills in the space between having something to do yet having no one to do it with. Venn functions on an event-to event basis and utilizes popular swiping mechanisms, geolocation, and instant postings to get people off of their computers and out into the world, doing the real things they love with real, new people. Users post events and activities to the event forum where prospective friends request to join listed events. Once a match is determined, to the choice of the event host, a chat interface is created, and users are free to proceed themselves.
Venn reimagines social media in contrast to its currently entrenched and often closed state. Social media should be used as a tool that enhances and facilitates the social experience, not one that pulls us farther away from it. Venn shall fill the void space between on the rise mobile dating applications and web-based social media networks. The application will foster local community growth, pathways to spontaneous, event based friendships, and social circle creation based in common interests and activities.
Venn is made for the young, lonely urbanite. Young adults today are especially mobile. Fresh graduates are often moving from city to city. This creates situations of relatively low, place-based social access. Large urban centers often comprise of excesses of strangers and rigid social circles.
Further, the demand for place-based, meet-up apps is perhaps higher than ever. Dating has been revolutionized by applications that connect directly prospective matches based on geolocation. Millennials are ready for the next step. Young adults are seeking a similar apparatus, though one that is eschews the preconceived expectation of romance. In brief, an app designed specifically for meeting people in an innocent setting while doing the things they love.
There are gaps in the current social media landscape. Place-based dating applications have surged in popularity, while the social media giants of Twitter and Facebook dominate social networking markets. Apps and websites specifically for events provide outlets, but the user experience has stagnated and is far behind. Meetup and Facebook Events, for example, still runs on a large group model and depends on outdated formulas. There is no spontaneity, nor instantaneousness. Further, one must pay to begin a Meetup group.
Though it is their stated function, social networks provide less ‘meeting’ and more ‘liking’ or ‘commenting.’ Dating apps often impose unwanted or unsolicited romantic pressure. Between the two categories, Venn provides a malleable, safe space that takes people away from the computer screen and doing real things in real time with real people. Second, no one has yet filled the market for event-based social media. Venn will provide a space through which events may be planned and carried out, from the pickup game of basketball at the local courts to the concert goer with a spare ticket, in a prompt and instantaneous manner.
