Indian youngsters, like many others, love posting selfies and memes on social networks. However, many are still reluctant to confess their crush or crib about a stern professor because there’s always a spoilsport cousin or a nosy relative on their friend list who points such posts out to the respective parents. And since everyone’s identity is public on school Facebook groups, many are not comfortable discussing doubts, grievances, and sensitive topics openly.
There’s no common space where India’s students can connect and network with peers from other colleges in a casual way. Realizing this, Ashutosh Garg teamed up with Rajesh Eswarlal and Niranjan Bala in December to bootstrap Bakfy.
The team soon realized that using a college email ID for signup was difficult since only a handful of colleges offer an email service to their students. So Bakfy integrated Facebook login on the premise that the majority of students have an account with Facebook. After signing up, the students need to select their college from the list to complete the signup, or one can be entered manually if it’s not listed.
Anonymous friends
The main point of Bakfy is that it lets users be anonymous. But the college’s name is always appended to the anonymous post. Users don’t have to add friends or follow anyone, like on most other social networks.
Public posts are visible to everyone on Bakfy, but users can choose to post privately instead, which will broadcast the message for their college network only. Just like Twitter and Facebook, hashtags can be used.
Under this cloak of anonymity, students can post gossip, scandals, share their problems, and seek guidance by conversing in the comments. Trolls shouldn’t be able to get too far since their account is tied to a Facebook login. The team is not too strict on what’s posted so long as things are meant in good humor – or users report instances of abuse. A part-time intern has been hired to vet those flagged posts.
Over 5,000 students from 40 different engineering colleges, such as NIT-Trichy (which co-founder Eswarlal attended), VIT-Vellore, DAIICT-Gandhinagar, and IIT-Guwahati, are using the app.
Familiar territory
Bakfy looks like a mix of Twitter, Facebook, Whisper, and Secret.
“Being a tiny team, we decided to use elements that the majority of users are familiar with. Be it Facebook posts or tweets, both have the same function – posting a message. Once we have a fairly large user base onboard, we shall slowly rebrand those elements to distinguish ourselves from others,” says Garg.
The real challenge lies in getting a sizable number of college students to use yet another social media app. The team has followed two approaches in this. Firstly, the startup works with campus ambassadors to launch the app in respective colleges. Secondly, users are rewarded with a free T-shirt for bringing buddies in through the Invite Friends feature.
Initial user feedback has got the team thinking to add more features, such as taking a public conversation to a private real-time chat, or sharing notes.
The Bakfy team plans to raise funds for hiring talent to work on new features and market the app in colleges across the country. The primary focus is to build a stable product first, expand to 80 colleges, and get 10,000 geographic-specific student profiles by end of this year. After, it plans to capitalize on those profiles through targeted advertising, campaigns, and other promotional activities.
Bakfy is available in Google Play for Android and the Windows Phone Store.
This post Post anonymously on an upcoming social network for colleges: Bakfy appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Post anonymously on an upcoming social network for colleges: Bakfy
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