Have you ever had a friend rave about amazing time they had at a party or concert, and all you could think about was “well why didn’t I know about that sooner?”
Faris Sheikh, a Bentley senior, is hoping to solve this exact problem with his new startup. “There’s so much happening around us that we’re just not aware of,” Sheikh comments, “we get tons of campus emails with so much dense information, we see flood of fliers everywhere.” He explains that information comes in such great volume and in such scattered patterns to college students that it’s not easy to find out exactly what you want to know about events, news, and deals.
While we do live in world of globalization— something that is constantly taught at Bentley— Sheikh and his startup are trying to reinvigorate the trend of localization with the goal of making college students’ lives on campus a lot easier.
Why You Need The Blimp
The startupjust launched their mobile app this week. It’s called The Blimp, and it’s currently only available for Bentley students. The Blimp is solving the information overload problem for everyday college students by providing an easily accessible, one-stop shop for discovering events, news, and tips on and around campus. Unlike other social media apps that are used for jokes and anonymous thoughts, The Blimp is strictly meant to be helpful. Its purpose is to be app of value that students can utilize every day. On The Blimp, you’ll discover local events, campus alerts, awesome tips, and other useful updates like:
Katy Perry performing at House of Blues next weekend
Free Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee all day
Tomorrow is last day to drop classes
Fidelity just closed their booth early at the career fair
How it Works
The way The Blimp works is very simple, when students discover helpful things on their own, they can post to the app so that hundreds of other students on campus know about them too. Users can then scroll through the local feed of updates and collectively vote on posts that are the most interesting and helpful to them. This ensures that annoying and boring advertisements are filtered out, while only the most useful posts rise to be displayed at the top. For each post, users can see how many students have viewed and voted on it. Posts can also be sorted by time, how many votes they have received, or their distance away from you. In the end, the app is all about helping students discover more by working together.
It’s time to never miss out on what’s happening around Bentley! Check out The Blimp and download the iOS app here now: http://apple.co/1PExrVo