HCUBC sat down with Alex Sismanis, CEO and co-founder of the newly-released app, Currents. Currents is an app specifically designed to connect you with your local community. For UBC students, this means getting connected to a live feed of events, pictures, news, and more from around campus and the larger Vancouver area.
Upon downloading the app, you can immediately choose different community specific “currents” to follow based on your interests, ranging from options like “UBC” and “Music”. By choosing which “currents” you want to follow, the app gives you the ability to see only the content that is interesting to you. Unlike other social networks which include information that isn’t relevant to your interests, and includes content from everywhere, Currents keeps its content specific to your liking and location.
Once you’ve followed all the “currents” you please, you are instantaneously connected to a network of users who live in your area and follow the same “currents” that you do. You can join in on the community discussion within each particular “current” by creating your own post, commenting on another user’s post, or by “upvoting” the posts you enjoy. For additional fun, each time you “upvote” another user’s post, you collect “Karma Points” which are displayed on your public profile.
By encouraging community interaction within each “current”, the app aims is to bring local users together. “I had this idea for a university app that would give everyone one place for community discussion,” Sismanis expressed. “Being not from Vancouver originally, I wanted to know what people were talking about and what people were like here – but I found it really hard to find a social network that does that.”
Currents is a social network that does specifically that. Through each “current”, the app lets you know about what is going on in your community. Especially for those of us still getting to know the area, Currents provides a great way to feel more connected to UBC and the greater Vancouver area.
If you’re interested in joining an online community of UBC students and local Vancouver residents, make sure to go and download the app. The Currents app is free to download and is available for IOS on the App Store and for Android on Google Play. Happy socializing!