Bivid, an app developed by college students Dean Glas and Mendy Raskin and launched in beta in September 2015, allows users to share real-time information from a given location and to follow teams, celebrities and the like.
Bivid competes against social media platforms such as Twitter, Yik Yak and Snapchat. Bivid users post under a username to both users in their location and users they follow.
Glas described what he sees is different about Bivid in an email to The News-Letter.
“There are no other apps on the market that do exactly what Bivid does,” Glas wrote. “The app focuses on the daily experience, instead of a weekly or monthly user experience with a long-term content shelf life.”
Glas discussed the lifespan of information shared via Bivid.
“Posts on Bivid disappear after 24 hours, which keeps content fresh and lets users see what’s going on around them in real-time.”
On the other hand, James Qin, a Hopkins freshman, does not see Bivid as a new way to learn more about campus.
“Between email, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Yik Yak, there are so many ways to get updated about events on campus,” Qin said. “I don’t see why we need another app.”
Yik Yak, another location-based social network, is popular among Hopkins students. Unlike Bivid, it is completely anonymous, so users cannot be tracked across posts and no post history is available to users.
Qin sees the idea of an anonymous social network to be inherently self-validating.
“It’s a place where people can share their thoughts without being judged by others,” Qin said. “You can be really shy and post a witty comment and then get upvotes and feel good about yourself.”
Junior Steven Doria agrees with this sentiment.
“When you write a yak, you show it to your friends right there and you feel good about yourself,” Doria said. “You get the validation from other people without any of the risk.”
Recently, Yik Yak at Hopkins has been controversial because of user anonymity, which has allowed racist comments and bullying to spread throughout the platform.
Glas and his team are confident that Bivid’s system of usernames and profiles will help reduce the risk of any inappropriate content being posted. He believes that the app’s model helps foster a healthy online community.
“Bivid aims to prevent online bullying by ensuring each user has a username and can’t hide behind a screen,” Glas said.
Doria thinks that the use of usernames is a good way to keep users accountable.
“There’s always the risk of being connected to your username. That’s less of a risk on Yik Yak because you can’t be tracked,” Doria said. “If you show a friend your posts on Bivid, your friends might realize they don’t like a lot of your posts. That can become a problem.”
Qin is not entirely convinced by the use of usernames as a cure to the problems surrounding location networks. He sees a privacy issue with the social scene on campus.
“People will probably start using the app at parties to spread the word around the campus,” Qin says. “Most of these parties have alcohol and drugs, and pictures taken might be incriminating and a lot of legal issues may arise–and none of that is prevented by the username.”
Doria questions Bivid’s ability to create a new online community from scratch.
“People only use apps where their friends are,” Doria said. “If there are no incentives or new features on a social network, I don’t really see people joining it.”
Qin agrees with this idea.
“There’s potential for the app to take off,” Qin said. “I like the idea of it being used as an exploration tool in new places, but for me and a lot of other people, apps like Snapchat already occupy this space.”
Glas, on the other hand, remains optimistic about the growth of the app. Additionally, Bivid plans on spreading its app through college campuses by using students themselves.
“Bivid users have more than doubled each month since we became available on the App Store in September, and we’re growing,” Glas said. “To expedite our growth, we’ve begun a college ambassador program to spread the Bivid love around the world, and we have reps on campuses across the globe.”
Bivid has $250,000 in seed funding in investors as of February 2016, according to CrunchBase. The company expects an additional round of funding in the first quarter of 2016. It is available on iOS and expected to launch on Android later this month.
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