New social app Drop makes it easier for users to find people with similar interests near them.
Jack Driscoll, 23, found apps like Facebook and Twitter do not make it easy enough to get in touch with people around you.
He created Drop as a way to search for people near you using different criteria and includes all their social media handles in one place.
“Huge organisations like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter hadn’t cottoned on to how hard they make it to add people,” Driscoll told BusinessCloud.
“When my slightly socially awkward friend and I are in a group of people, even though he chats and gets along with them, he doesn’t want to be the one who asks if he can have their Snapchat.
“But once you’re on Drop you can just go online and it’s all there.”
In an age where loneliness is so prolific the government has appointed a minister dedicated to fighting it, Drop can help people connect in a range of situations. It can also be used as a dating app but that isn’t the main point, says Driscoll.
“Most people say to me ‘oh, it’s Tinder’, but no, it isn’t,” he said.
“There’s no ‘yes or no’: it’s a carousel you can scroll through. On the standard settings you see people of all relationship statuses, all interests, all languages and all nationalities.
“A lot of users put in their bio that they’ve just moved to a new city and are looking to make some new friends.
“You can say ‘she likes yoga and so do I, I’ve just moved here, maybe I’ll ask where the best studios are’.”
With 500 users since December and growing, the company is targeting different locations around the country to ensure it reaches critical mass in each place, and has also proven popular with people while travelling.
Driscoll admits he has found it a challenge to be taken seriously at times thanks to his age and brought his parents to initial meetings with developers as they had more experience.
However he believes his age means he’s in touch with the social media generation. As a result, he knew which features to include with the app.
The idea for Drop came after Driscoll broke up with his long-term girlfriend towards the end of university.
“I was with my girlfriend for four years so I missed all the Tinder stuff,” he said.
“Me and some friends were out at a bar on a Friday night and saw a few attractive girls. We weren’t going ‘out out’ so we all looked pretty rough and we didn’t want to go over but did want to add them on Snapchat or Instagram or something.
“I thought there must be a way to do that and surely everyone would want everything in one place but I had a look around and nowhere did it.
“I was finishing uni in a few months no thought there was no time like the present to have a go.”