Elon students designed and launched their own app, CampU.
The app was inspired by the movie “The Social Network,” when Sophomore Daniel Crocker decided that Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat weren’t fulfilling his needs.
“Everything is all over the place,” Crocker said. “We wanted to have a central place for a community to come together and share all of these moments.”
Crocker, along with business partner and Elon sophomore Tom Lombardozzi, came up with the idea for the app in May. The project brought in a web developer, Will Cohen, a freshman at Boston University as well as Cole McCorkle and Gabe Halpern, who are both sophomores at Elon.
The group named the app CampU, inspired by the name students here at Elon give the university.
“Elon has this unique place where we aren’t in a city, it’s tucked in this little bubble which gives it a camp feel,” Lombardozzi said. “We think this can apply at other universities too.”
The app allows users to join only their campus, using a campus email address. Users can upload eight-second videos to a general feed that everyone can see.
The creators of the app decided not to incorporate followers.
“We wanted this to be a community app,” Crocker said. “Followers take away from this because not everyone can see everything.”
Lombardozzi and Crocker said one of the biggest challenges when creating the app was overcoming Apple’s strict regulations for creating an app, which requires having an LLC.
But most importantly, the two said they are concerned with privacy protections.
The app offers a report feature that users can mark videos as offensive, violent content, or report that they are in the video and they want it taken down.
The app is available in the app store.