Stanford social gathering apps hit the scene

A 12 months after “Stanford Hates Enjoyable” swept campus, bringing the suspension of the Tree and the election of the present ASSU executives on a enjoyable oriented platform in its wake, the motion to foster a freer and extra vigorous campus tradition has impressed Stanford’s newest spherical of startups: social gathering apps. 

Two apps — Wristband and Mixer — are every looking for to change into college students’ go-to platform to find occasions occurring throughout campus and RSVP. Each apps started advertising their companies to college students this quarter. 

To this point, each apps have very comparable performance. Wristband and Mixer each promote upcoming events and conferences on their app, whereas additionally permitting their customers to maintain monitor of occasions they’ve registered for. Each apps additionally enable organizations and people to register their occasions on the location, in addition to restrict who receives entry to their occasion. When opening the app, the most important perceived distinction between the 2 apps could also be their differing colour schemes. 

“Final 12 months, we actually had a wrestle discovering occasions on campus,” mentioned Ameya Jadhav ’26, the co-founder of Mixer. Tristan Ketterer ’22, the co-founder of Wristband, echoed the sensation, “There simply didn’t exist a simple place for folks to study that data and determine what to do,” Ketterer mentioned.

The primary distinction between the apps lies of their introductions to campus.

Not too long ago, Wristband marketed occasions akin to Kappa Sigma’s Eurotrash, Sigma Phi Epsilon’s White Lies and ASHA’s annual garba. Mixer publicized quite a lot of smaller occasions, performances and socials, like a screening of “Friday the thirteenth” on Oct. 13 and Stanford Live performance Community’s “Welcome Again Present” the day after.

Regardless of this obvious slight distinction within the startups’ audiences, many occasions are cross-listed between the 2 platforms. As of the time of publication, 10 out of the 14 occasions publicly marketed on Wristband have been equivalent to 10 of the 27 occasions at present marketed on Mixer. 

Whereas Ketterer says he plans to finally department out past Greek life occasions, Wristband marketed its product to fraternities from the get-go, providing app modifications and financial compensation for fraternities to make use of the apps, Ketterer mentioned. Ketterer declined to touch upon how a lot cash every fraternity acquired. 

“We realized that a big a part of Stanford’s social life was centered round Greek life,” Ketterer mentioned. “We approached fraternities fairly early on about working collectively and creating options for them to ensure that them to place their occasions on there.”

In the meantime, Mixer is at present within the course of of selling aggressively in the direction of non-Greek affiliated college students and pupil organizations. “I believe the toughest half is definitely getting adoption,” Jadhav mentioned. He believes that Mixer’s broad deal with all kinds of occasions together with group conferences, performances and cultural occasions will be capable to entice a wide-range of scholars to make use of the platform. 

“Mixer reached out to us,” mentioned ASSU co-chair of social life and inclusivity Emily Deng ’25. “I haven’t heard of Wristband.”

The Mixer crew has plans to quickly start offering perks to teams who promote completely on the platform. “They are going to give out present playing cards to random folks at our occasion or merch if that individual is on Mixer,” mentioned Anusha Dwarkanath ’26, president of Stanford Noopur. Jadhav confirmed this, saying that the deliberate promotion might be “only a quick time period commercial plan … to get [more] college students on Mixer.”

In keeping with Dwarkanath, utilizing Mixer is simple and easy in comparison with e mail lists of different types of commercial. However she mentioned that when promoting for her group, “it’s all about the place the individuals are.”

Wristband additionally entered some early controversy round its dealing with of Eurotrash, the primary frat social gathering of the 12 months and an annual custom at Stanford. Previous to the occasion, Ketterer designed flyers urging folks to “get your wristband” for Eurotrash. Many frosh felt that this poster misled them, making them imagine a wristband was required to enter the social gathering, although Eurotrash was an all-campus occasion. 

In response, Ketterer posted an apology on Fizz utilizing a screenshot from his Notes app. On this publish, he apologized for the scenario and warranted customers the slip-up was not intentional, displaying regret that his actions induced “main confusion.”

“I stand by what I mentioned,” Ketterer mentioned. “It was not my intention in any capability to mislead folks, however I acknowledge that’s what occurred, and I’m actually sorry about that.”

Mixer, although at present free from controversy, could also be dropping the battle of person adoption. As of now, Wristband has round 1500 customers on the app, Ketterer mentioned. In keeping with Jadhav, Mixer has 310 energetic customers. 

“With any platform that’s about congregating occasion data and getting occasion hosters to wish to publish that occasion data on there, you want folks,” Ketterer mentioned. “However folks solely wish to be on a platform like this if there are occasion posters.”

Nevertheless, each apps fall in need of the widespread attain of “The Playing cards,” the ASSU’s weekly e mail blasts saying campus occasions and alternatives on the undergraduate-wide mailing checklist, ostensibly reaching the over 7700 undergraduate college students. Not like each apps, “The Playing cards” promote solely all-campus occasions, akin to events, sporting occasions and neighborhood socials. Moreover, organizations don’t at all times need to register their occasions themselves. In some instances, Deng and her co-chair, Annie Reller ’24 simply ask organizers to approve the itemizing.

“Everybody checks their e mail, as a result of we type of need to test our e mail,” Deng mentioned. “It’s good that as a part of ASSU now we have entry to the complete undergrad mailing checklist.” 

Jadhav and Ketterer each appeared unperturbed by the competing merchandise. “All competitors is wholesome. We love that there are different folks making an attempt to resolve this downside,” Jadhav mentioned. 

Most college students interviewed, nevertheless, agreed that one centralized app for occasions could be ideally suited.

“The truth that there are a number of apps that serve the identical function … is irritating,” mentioned Will Kousser ’27.

It’s nonetheless too early to inform which platform – if any – will come out on prime. Nevertheless, each founders appear assured concerning the want for his or her merchandise on campus. 

“I do envision sooner or later there simply being this one app that every one the teams on campus are utilizing that’s fairly seamless, integrates throughout all completely different teams, all various kinds of occasions,” Jadhav mentioned.