If you’re sick of seeing pictures of the same faces over and over again on Facebook and generally sick of Facebook itself, there’s something totally new coming your way.
At the Pool is a new free social networking site that aims to connect students to people they don’t know. The site is launching for UMB students on Sept 6 and intends to connect people through intelligent matching based on mutual interests and location.
The site also aims to connect each user to one new person every day. Users will meet people who will have the same hobbies, live in the same area, and go to the same university.
This should be great for students wishing to make new friends who share mutual interests, and particularly great for a commuter school like UMB where a lot of students complain it’s tough to meet new people.
Launched this past year, At the Pool was founded by current CEO Alex Capecelatro, a University of California Los Angeles graduate. The company is based in Las Angeles and has thousands of members in over 45 different countries.
“It’s tough meeting new people, and we’re working to change that. Facebook is great at connecting us with friends and family, but terrible at introducing us to someone new,” Capecelatro says.
UMass Boston students can signing up online using “UMB” as the invite code. The goal is to build up a profile and then join different “pools” which will ultimately be what introduces users to new people.
“We live in a time when we don’t know our neighbors. We all want to make friends,” Capecelatro explains. “We’re building a cohesive community to get people offline, meeting new people, in the real world.”
Calling the Internet “a barrier” instead of a “gateway,” Capecelatro has set out to use At the Pool as a platform to overcome these limitations.
Visit www.atthepool.com/ to check it out.
