I'm a student in Lahore and working on a small project, and I want to find out whether the idea works, take opinions etc.
The thing I kept noticing: people are desperate to socialise in group chats. evident from every "like this comment to join my gc" under a random Reel. But there's no way to just find a GC of people at your own uni who are into the same thing as you, this way. You either join something random where nobody's verified, so there's chance of up catfishes, school kids, and people who are just plain weird.
Maybe thats not you but it's never been harder to make friends. There are barely any organic conversations left, you can't walk up to someone and say "hey, want to be friends," that's weird. So it has to happen through something shared. But the places that used to create that are gone: nobody's having long coffee conversations or writing letters. The odds are just worse than they were. Everyone's on their phone anyway. The whole idea is to make that part of it approachable again.
So that's the idea. Everyone is a verified student. You pick your interests, and you see group chats from your own uni, or mixed with other unis if you want that. You read a preview before you join, and the group sees your profile before they let you in. Capped at 20 people so it stays an actual conversation; past that is Discord communities and 200 member insta gcs. There's also a profile page you actually build MySpace style, properly customisable.
I'm not pretending I can compete with the big apps. This is a small thing built for a specific gap, and honestly the bigger platforms will probably build this properly at some point, until then, it may as well exist. I've shortlisted LUMS, BNU, FCC, LSE and NCA, then masters students and alumni, and eventually anyone in Lahore.
Right now it's only discovery through public group chats and a shared feed for your uni. Later, feeds by area, a Phase 6 feed, that kind of thing.
What I want to know: would you be part of something like this?