Uniyo - Campus communication for students

Remembering how awful the community platforms were when I was in college, I was really excited for the Uniyo team when I got to see their product for the first time. It's awesome to see platforms like Uniyo and http://islands.im/ tackle the college community space, which is ripe for innovation since Facebook took over it back in my college days. I'm a big fan of platforms that use gamification/reputation as a way to encourage their ideal community culture rather than just fueling ego and competition. The donut system speaks to the vibe they're trying to create, which seems lighthearted and focused on helping each other. Donuts are a sort of "thank you" to someone that has helped you. When you see someone with a lot of donuts, you don't think "wow they're really influential" - you think "wow, they're really helpful". The slack interface is becoming more common in community spaces, but seems to be especially fitting for a college network which has a range of different needs and topics. History has shown that the social platforms that can capture the college market can become the social platforms that capture all markets. Of course, getting even one college to be fully bought in to a platform is extremely difficult. Hope the Uniyo team can figure it out!

Thanks @DavidSpinks for hunting us! We are super happy to be on PH today! Hi guys! We're the co-founders of Uniyo, hoping to catch some quality feedback on what we're doing. We just came out of the Refiners Fleet 2, an accelerator program based in San Francisco. We're on a mission to reinvent college campuses by creating meaningful student communities. A couple of years ago, we launched Uniyu which was a note-sharing app for students. It did well in terms of sign up in universities in the Montreal region but it wasn't that great in terms of retention. Students are downloading notes only before the midterms and finals exams... So, we spent more than a year reinventing what could be the best app to allow students to share all kinds of information: ask questions, get answer, find campus tips, and more. Uniyo is the front page of your campus. It's a powerful messaging app to reach the entire campus and to know instantly what's going on. You can share anything that matters with the rest of your campus. We launched a first pilot in HEC Montreal during the last 3 weeks of the semester. 20% of the campus signed up and that was a solid proof of our concept. We also received tons of feedback to build Uniyo. What's the difference with Slack? Slack is for smaller teams (20 coworkers, maybe 200 max) but you can't chat with 25k students in your school. Uniyo is built for large numbers through a smart newsfeed system and strong gamification. What's the difference with WhatsApp or GroupMe? Just like Slack, try to direct chat with your entire campus and you'll feel the pain. What's the difference with Facebook groups? You never know which Facebook groups to join on campus and if you join all of them, it'll simply ruin your newsfeed. Uniyo works more like a Twitter feed where you organize your information following hashtags that are relevant to you. We are still a boostrapped team and we still have a lot to learn from your feedback. We're looking forward to hearing from you all! Ask us anything! 🍩 Team Uniyo 🍩

Tried it for a week, quite liked the feeling around the app. Well thought out, definitely be interested in the advanced version of it.

Pros:

Concept

Ux

The donuts!

Cons:

Specific emojis?

So impressed to see how this team bootstrapped Uniyo ! Congrats guys

Campuses should be all about collaboration and helping each other learn. Not competition. This tool would help just that on just about any campus and even communities. Top notch!

Pros:

Would crush any campus tools out there right now (Blackboard? Campus Bubble?)

Cons:

I am not longer in college :(

If Twitter and Slack had a child on a campus, it would have been Uniyo!

Pros:

I like global UX of this app and how they design user interactions. Giving donuts is fun and definitely the cherry on the cake.

Cons:

I want it on android

Probably the best communication platform I've seen for campuses. Students really need better ways to communicate, share and collaborate, the potential is huge.

Pros:

Modern UX, conversation oriented,

Cons:

I've been trying the app a few and I really love the gamification part, it makes it so much easier to get into a funny engagement with the community!

Pros:

the Donuts!

Cons:

Great team and a lot of good ideas

Pros:

it gives a modern and easy tool to all students to communicate

Cons:

they need more universities onboard

It'll be interesting to see how it picks up. Request the developers to update us how they got participants to adopt their platform.

Pros:

One place for all campus discussions including the academic stuff.

Cons:

It'll be useful only if a lot of students from same campus join.

Great UX.

Pros:

A new way to improve communication on campus.

Cons:

I would have liked to have this app when I was a student

The app seems very easy to use and attractive

Pros:

It would have been so useful when I was a student!! A shame it did not exist at this time...

Cons:

No, I do not see any cons

Great job, Emmanuel and team. Uniyo looks very interesting and even the interface. These days tools to build college communities are cluttered and like you mentioned in the differences between Slack, Facebook it makes perfect sense to have a platform like Uniyo to start communities from scratch and only through recommendation of what you choose to see in your feed.

Nice idea with high potential. Once you nailed it, hopefully you'll make all sort of versions for different communities.

Pros:

specialized/useful social media

Cons:

critical mass challenge

I like the way you have designed the thumbnail. <3

I think you guys have a great product. We have a similar passion to create campus communities in higher education and improve communication and digital equity. Good job with Uniyo!