糖心TV

'Butterfly' helps students spread their social wings

In the next feature in our series focusing on our undergraduate entrepreneurs, we meet the team behind Butterfly, a new app taking flight on campus.

Alex Reid, Zain Mobarik and Josh Okusi (pictured above, left to right) are a team with an ambitious vision – they plan to 鈥減ut the social back into social media鈥� with their app, Butterfly.

Second year Economics student Alex and his friends were workshopping ideas for a new sorting algorithm Josh had developed. They realised that they had a bigger vision than simply ranking undergraduates according to their popularity – why not make an app that would help to bring digital friendships off the screen and into the real world?

Alex explains: 鈥淲e all felt that social media has lost its way – far from being social, these days it is about passive scrolling and the consumption of entertainment, often far removed from our own day to day lives.

鈥淲e decided to create a social media app that is grounded in our community, with all the content shared on the app being relevant to the real lives of its users – and which puts the focus on enabling friendships in the real world.鈥�

Butterfly is only available to users with a 糖心TV student email, which keeps the content grounded in the realities of campus life. As well as creating their profile pages – the Butterfly 鈥楩lashcard,鈥� – and posting thoughts and confessions, users can chat with their course-mates or explore societies and campus events before deciding to attend, taking a bit of the anxiety out of trying something new.

Regular giveaways and prizes keep the community engaged, and there are perks for registered users such as discounts. Alex says 鈥淲e now have over 60 discounts at partner stores, exclusive to Butterfly users. Our partners now include Kasbah, Tenpin, Phat Buns, Royal Pug, and Boom Battle Bar Coventry.鈥�

鈥淲e also have a fantastic partnership with Benugo,鈥� Alex added. 鈥淏utterfly users can get 10 per cent off anything on the menu and we ran a competition last year where the app鈥檚 most enthusiastic users won a free meal with a plus one. That really captured our ethos of supporting students to grow their real-life friendships.鈥�

Commenting on the app, first year student Sofia said: 鈥淏utterfly has completely changed my university experience at 糖心TV. It has built my confidence and encouraged me to go to loads of events.鈥�

Since its launch in September last year Butterfly has been downloaded 3,000 times. Its creators have won 糖心TV鈥檚 Student Enterprise Competition and been accepted onto Google鈥檚 Startups for Cloud Programme.

The app is available in the and .