Mobile

Elon Students Create Campus-Only Social App

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/31/19

A team of students at North Carolina's Elon University have launched a social app that allows its users to share short videos. According to coverage by the institution's student-run news network, Daniel Crocker and Tom Lombardozzi launched the project because they were frustrated by how the current social platforms weren't meeting their needs.

CampU, as the iOS app is called (after students' nickname for the campus), enables users to join only their campus, using a campus e-mail address. Once they've registered, they can upload eight-second videos that everybody can view. There are no followers, just a general feed.

"We wanted this to be a community app," explained Crocker in the article. "Followers take away from this because not everyone can see everything."

"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," added Lombardozzi, noting that he believes the app could be useful at other universities too.

The app includes a reporting feature to enable viewers to tag videos as inappropriate or spam or to report that they are in a video that they want taken down.