Coming to Ohio State this week, Amigo allows students to connect and combat the loneliness of the pandemic. Credit: Courtesy of Sophia Huard
College friendships are usually formed in dorm hallways and student organizations, but Amigo gives college students a way to find friends during the pandemic virtually.
Amigo is a social-networking app that allows users to create individual and group profiles and meet people from their school. Co-founders Paa Adu and Sophia Huard said they wanted to give students a slightly more normal college experience than what they are experiencing in the pandemic.
“Sophie and I met because we lived next door to each other,” Adu said. “So, we were thinking like, ‘Dang, if we weren’t in the dorms, we would have not met.’”
The Stanford alumni started working on Amigo in August and launched it on Stanford’s campus Dec. 4. Now, Amigo is also available at the University of California Berkeley, Cornell University, the University of Michigan and Ohio State, and plans to keep expanding.
“We’ve seen interest from students from Africa and Australia, so I think really, there’s a need for something like Amigo across campuses all over the world,” Adu said.
Amigo boasts almost 2,500 downloads from its first five schools, Adu said, and the engagement is continuous, with users going back to the app and interacting daily.
Rachel Becker, a second-year in marketing and a campus ambassador for Amigo, said she joined Amigo because she felt disconnected from the Ohio State community.
“COVID is challenging as a college student because most of us are not able to see all our friends or make new ones,” Becker said. “Personally, I don’t have any in-person classes, and I don’t live in a dorm, so it is hard to feel connected to Ohio State.”
To use the app, Huard said new members can create their own profile and tailor their feed of profiles to their interests by answering prompts and marking preferences such as on campus or off campus.
“We didn’t want to focus on physical appearance, we wanted it to be more like answering these prompts and show your interests and really showing a personality,” Huard said.
Every day at 8 p.m., a certain set of profiles is unlocked for users to view. In order to connect, users must send a message request to the other user.
Users can also create a group profile with friends. Huard said the goal of the group profile option is to eliminate the scariness of looking for friends.
“It’s hard to put yourself out there,” Huard said. “One way we found to kind of mitigate that was to implement groups. And so you can go on there with your best friend, your roommate, you know, and that all of a sudden makes it less intimidating.”
Although many students turn to social media to find friends, Adu said sites such as Instagram and Facebook do not provide much interaction beyond the surface level of liking pictures or viewing profiles.
“Social media is more to maintain relationships, rather than building new ones,” Huard said.
Although some dating apps have a friend mode, such as Bumble BFF, Huard said there are still issues with that method.
“It is framed after the dating app. So it’s very much like or no like of physical appearance,” Huard said.
Additionally, because dating apps are location-based, if a user is not on campus, they will not see people from their school. Adu said Amigo fixes this issue by making the app pool school-based, along with eliminating the restrictions on gender.
“Everyone on the platform is verified to go to your school,” Adu said. “So from the beginning, you know that you’re going to be seeing the pool of people you most likely want to meet.”
Because the app was designed during the pandemic, Becker said it hits a need a lot of students have.
“We are all used to Zoom calls for class, projects or clubs, but Amigo can bring back the ability to make new friends,” Becker said.
Right now, Ohio State students can create individual or group profiles, but they will then be in a locked state until enough users join the app.
“The reason for that is user experience,” Huard said. “We don’t want only two people to sign up, like each other, and then never come back.”
The team plans to unlock the Ohio State community on the app within the next week.
