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Hi, another Wildfire co-founder here. We're initially targetting college campuses, starting with UC Berkeley. In urban college towns, rampant crime exists, an

by yadirh 11y ago

Hi, another Wildfire co-founder here. We're initially targetting college campuses, starting with UC Berkeley. In urban college towns, rampant crime exists, and there's already a community around safety. Our primary way to get users on the app is by partnering with student governments and campus police for advertising. In one month, we've gained nearly 1k active users in Berkeley. Our biggest growth factor is word-of-mouth: whenever users receive Wildfire alerts, they tell their friends, so we average 20 new downloads with each notification sent.

alex_g 11y ago
I don't know about the entire community (ie. non college students), but there are existing emergency notification systems for college campuses. I get a text and an email from my school when there is an attempted robbery, a sexual assault, or even a mountain lion sighting. I'm assuming the school finds out about these incidents via campus police, who may get info from students. Is your application trying to speed up that process, or provide the ability to report more types of incidents? What protections to you envision to prevent fake/prank reports? A police officer is easily able to vet a claim and report on its truthfulness. Do you see your app as a peer-to-peer tool, or as a way for authorities to be able to learn about incidents quicker?
- 199318039 11y ago
  Hi alex_g, thanks for the question! Our app is hoping to bridge the time between an incident happening and people who are in the vicinity of the event hearing about it. We see our app as a peer-to-peer tool and what makes our emergency notification system better is that it is a two-way form of communication. Not only can people view incidents, but they can also report them based on what they see, comment, add pictures, and view live updates in a social way. So to use our app, users have to log-in with facebook, after which their profile picture, first name, and mutual friends will be attached to anything they post. With Facebook authentication, we’ve noticed that trolling isn’t as prevalent in our current locations.

by yadirh 11y ago

alex_g 11y ago

I don't know about the entire community (ie. non college students), but there are existing emergency notification systems for college campuses. I get a text and an email from my school when there is an attempted robbery, a sexual assault, or even a mountain lion sighting. I'm assuming the school finds out about these incidents via campus police, who may get info from students. Is your application trying to speed up that process, or provide the ability to report more types of incidents? What protections to you envision to prevent fake/prank reports? A police officer is easily able to vet a claim and report on its truthfulness. Do you see your app as a peer-to-peer tool, or as a way for authorities to be able to learn about incidents quicker?

199318039 11y ago
Hi alex_g, thanks for the question! Our app is hoping to bridge the time between an incident happening and people who are in the vicinity of the event hearing about it. We see our app as a peer-to-peer tool and what makes our emergency notification system better is that it is a two-way form of communication. Not only can people view incidents, but they can also report them based on what they see, comment, add pictures, and view live updates in a social way. So to use our app, users have to log-in with facebook, after which their profile picture, first name, and mutual friends will be attached to anything they post. With Facebook authentication, we’ve noticed that trolling isn’t as prevalent in our current locations.