4 ms·

Opinion - Campus question app

2 points by psandiego 14y ago

Goal: Help a lot of students improve their campus lives Building an app, where students in a campus can interact and collaborate Purpose of app is to ask questions to entire campus to get help with everyday decisions like --which course to choose, which professor is better, sublease apartment, campus jobs and any other question they can think of, which they want to get help with of campus life thoughts about this app? possibility of scaling this? Inputs appreciated. Thank you

caw 14y ago
First off, do you need an app or just a website? I can tell you that most of the stuff you're questioning about already exists as separate forums, and you'd really have to demonstrate value to have it in one place. There's already a rate a professor website. Theres abundant course data, along with GPAs per semester so you can draw conclusions. Campus jobs are posted on boards across campus, along with some subleases. Help with campus life is vague, why should I trust you (aka anonymous people that claim they're from my school) rather than people I know? Basically, college kids will probably have a network to get this information from, whether it's a fraternity/sorority, or just their friends from class. Should you do this, you're going to have a hard time with data startup, because most of the other sites have crowdsourced data over time. If it's not useful, no one will use it, and no one will put data in it. I'd also argue that those questions are not daily decisions. Once a semester maybe.
- psandiego 14y ago
  This really helps. Thanks a lot, as I dont have to spend time for 5 months and realize that I really wasted my time Appreciate your time for the comment
  - caw 14y ago
    You can do it, I'm just trying to ask questions that will make you think. Those answers are going to be your advantage and possibly your marketing.
Terpaholic 14y ago
Campus Maps (http://www.getcampusmaps.com http://www.getcampusmaps.com) is in this exact space and is facing a few problems with scaling: Connecting with new students is hard: The ones who hear about the app already have friends to ask questions, and the ones who don't hear about it are the ones you want to reach. Narrow the value-proposition for them: so that they see it and say "Ah, I want that!", I feel you may be offering too many services to begin with. Hard to gain traction with college students if you are not one of them: I am lucky to be in my senior year, but marketing it after graduation is going to be immensely harder. Are you a college student? Make sure that the app is designed to scale from the start and that it won't kill you to add another school and have it flop there: I just expanded to UVA, my first new school. It generated a little bit of verbal buzz, but my downloads were almost untouched. In order to add it, I had to rewrite my app from the ground up because I didn't imagine scaling it past my school, UMD. Adding new schools now is a snap that everything is designed for expansion. Good luck and feel free to reach out!

2 points by psandiego 14y ago

caw 14y ago

First off, do you need an app or just a website? I can tell you that most of the stuff you're questioning about already exists as separate forums, and you'd really have to demonstrate value to have it in one place. There's already a rate a professor website. Theres abundant course data, along with GPAs per semester so you can draw conclusions. Campus jobs are posted on boards across campus, along with some subleases. Help with campus life is vague, why should I trust you (aka anonymous people that claim they're from my school) rather than people I know? Basically, college kids will probably have a network to get this information from, whether it's a fraternity/sorority, or just their friends from class. Should you do this, you're going to have a hard time with data startup, because most of the other sites have crowdsourced data over time. If it's not useful, no one will use it, and no one will put data in it. I'd also argue that those questions are not daily decisions. Once a semester maybe.

psandiego 14y ago
This really helps. Thanks a lot, as I dont have to spend time for 5 months and realize that I really wasted my time Appreciate your time for the comment
- caw 14y ago
  You can do it, I'm just trying to ask questions that will make you think. Those answers are going to be your advantage and possibly your marketing.

Terpaholic 14y ago

Campus Maps (http://www.getcampusmaps.com http://www.getcampusmaps.com) is in this exact space and is facing a few problems with scaling: Connecting with new students is hard: The ones who hear about the app already have friends to ask questions, and the ones who don't hear about it are the ones you want to reach. Narrow the value-proposition for them: so that they see it and say "Ah, I want that!", I feel you may be offering too many services to begin with. Hard to gain traction with college students if you are not one of them: I am lucky to be in my senior year, but marketing it after graduation is going to be immensely harder. Are you a college student? Make sure that the app is designed to scale from the start and that it won't kill you to add another school and have it flop there: I just expanded to UVA, my first new school. It generated a little bit of verbal buzz, but my downloads were almost untouched. In order to add it, I had to rewrite my app from the ground up because I didn't imagine scaling it past my school, UMD. Adding new schools now is a snap that everything is designed for expansion. Good luck and feel free to reach out!