College students across the country now have yet another way to meet each other: an app, created by Princeton University students, that allows people to make connections as potential friends, hookups or dates.

“The original idea was that there’s so many people on your campus that you kind of know or that you may want to get to know better, maybe friendly or maybe in romantic ways, but it’s hard to take the next step to make it actually happen,” said Vaidhy Murti, co-founder and CEO of Friendsy.

That’s where Friendsy comes in. The app allows users to create accounts with up to six profile pictures and information like their major, extracurricular activities or graduating year. Then they browse the profiles of their classmates, indicating interest in becoming friends, hooking up or dating. If the person reciprocates the same interest, it’s a match — and if not, “your secret is safe,” Murti said. “The most negative experience you can have on Friendsy is a neutral one.”

Murti and his co-founder, Michael Pinsky, met when they happened to sit next to each other while watching a New York Yankees game in Princeton’s campus center. They struck up a conversation, went to a Yankees game together a few days later and are now close friends and roommates. But they realized that friendships don’t often take off that easily from chance encounters.

“The initial goal for Friendsy was to solve that problem and help you take that next step if both of you are mutually interested,” Murti said.

Since Murti and Pinsky launched the original app at Princeton in May 2013, they have added features like the “murmur feed,” a page of anonymous posts that the Friendsy team monitors to make sure only safe and positive comments appear.

In the spring of 2013, Murti contacted Mojin Chen, his friend since elementary school, to help launch the app on Chen’s campus, Dartmouth College.

Chen estimated that last spring, about 1,600 or 1,700 people on Dartmouth’s campus of just over 6,000 students were using Friendsy. Now, with the class of 2014 gone from campus and a new group of freshmen unfamiliar with Friendsy having arrived, Chen said it would be hard to estimate the current number of Dartmouth students using the app. “I expect, and I hope, to see it pick back up,” he said.

Now, Chen said, Friendsy is “pretty much self-sustaining” at Dartmouth, at least among students who were on campus last year. But he said he still gives advice to those launching Friendsy at other campuses.

The app is now active on 41 campuses, most of which were launched within the past few weeks. Over 150,000 mutual connections have been made through Friendsy so far, Murti said, over 65 percent of which have been friendships, and the rest hookups or dates.

One of the challenges for the Friendsy team has been avoiding the social stigma of dating websites or hookup apps. “We’re not some sort of Tinder knockoff,” Murti said. Another challenge is that every feature of Friendsy has to be adapted for the app’s three platforms: web, iPhone and android.

But in spite of these challenges, the start of the new school year has brought success for the Friendsy team as they launched at dozens of colleges across the country. Last week they hit 20,000 users, and finalized a $100,000 deal with private investors who read about the app in Dartmouth’s student paper when they launched at the school.

Over the next six to 12 months, Murti and his co-founders will put the money toward launching the app at new schools and trying to gain as many users as possible on existing Friendsy campuses. Their next big goal: hitting 100,000 users, and creating more connections between college students.

“We’re not trying to replace the real life connection you’re going to make,” Murti said. “We’re just trying to give you a little nudge to help actually make it in the first place.”

Published on September 25, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Maggie: mmcregan@syr.edu