Harvard senior Patrick Colangelo is launching a social media platform that plans to revolutionize how people meet and remember one other.
The free mobile app, called Spayce, is based on the notion of "capturing the moment," according to Colangelo. Spayce uses facial recognition software and hyper-location to essentially put a room full of people on your smartphone.
Users within a 100-meter radius of one other will be able to see each other's profiles and connect immediately. You can create a personal profile, which includes pictures, friends, relationship status and three adjectives to describe yourself, as well as a professional profile, which shows your occupation and three industries with which you are associated.
"We want to show you wherever you are, what's happening around you and who's around you," Colangelo says. "We're focused on what I would say is the future of social media."
When a Spayce user connects with new or old friends, they can develop what is called a "Memory." These memories can be temporary or permanent, and you can set them as private, friends or public. Aside from this, there is a "Look Back" feature that allows you to see everyone you've encountered within the previous day.
"This makes for a live feed of what's happening there whenever you walk into a room," Colangelo says. "All memories that you create are saved permanently for participants but expire in 100 minutes for your friends on their memory feed."
Spayce has a 15-member team of engineers and designers, as well as over 80 campus ambassadors nationwide. After running a prototype of the app in December for 300 Harvard students, the team receieved overwhelmingly positive feedback and had "tens of thousands of people" on the waiting list.
"When you see that kind of potential to change the world, it really becomes your life," Colangelo says. "We hope that all this time we spent building this product will really change people's lives, for the better, all over the world."
To find out more about Spayce, check out this video.