This week in the series, The Star reporter Simon Henderson talks to Scott Clifford about a new way to enjoy events.
Discontented with the current trend of endless scrolling, two friends are hoping to develop a better way to connect.
Bringing the "social" back to social media is the aim of a new startup co-founded by friends Scott Clifford and Noah Atchison-Darby.
Kinecty aims to create a community of students who get off the couch and out the door to enjoy events that appeal to them.
Mr Clifford said the current social media environment seemed to favour people spending the whole time scrolling through feeds and not actually interacting with people they cared about.
"We are hoping to redefine the social side of social media."
Young people could feel socially isolated, so he hoped to create an app that had a focus on events.
"The whole point of the app is to actually go out and do stuff with your friends, or make new friends."
The app would enable people to share posts about the events they attended, and even submit events of any size, whether it was a simple gathering for coffee or a big outdoor activity.
With experience in event management and networking, the two co-founders were well positioned to help enable events, he said.
Having events at the forefront of the user experience would ensure Kinecty had a point of difference from other social media apps.
In the post-Covid-19 pandemic environment, a lot of social interaction had changed, Mr Clifford said.
He aimed to build a user base of students in Dunedin, starting with people signing up to a newsletter that would deliver information about events taking place that were relevant to young people.
"The current solutions aren’t working, so we are in a good position where we can work really closely with that user base to find a solution that works for them."
The next stage was to look for some new team members to help build an app that would develop over time to make sure it was relevant to the users.
"As we continue making the next iteration, we are going to work really closely with them, validating as we go to make sure we are building a product for them.
"We are trying to make sure it appeals to the largest majority of students possible."
As users began to interact with the app, it would have the ability to fine-tune the types of events that would be displayed to each user.
"The end product will be very focused on showing you the events you are interested in."
