Welcome to Camp

While watching The Social Network for a communications class, Daniel Crocker '22 couldn’t shake the feeling that “there had to be some next big social media platform since Instagram and Snapchat were almost a decade old.” While discussing the opportunity with Thomas Lombardozzi '22, a friend from his first year, they shaped the idea of their app, CampU.

Over Xbox, Crocker pitched the idea of a social media platform based on popular content, which Lombardozzi supplemented with his pitch of the college exclusive factor. “It was truly a co-founded idea” Lombardozzi said.

The two began working on bringing the idea to life almost immediately, enlisting Gabe Halpern '22 and Cole McCorkle '22 to help with graphic design and IT aspects. 

According to Crocker, the hardest part for the group was “finding a developer when you know nothing about mobile applications and how much coding work should cost.” Eventually, they “came across an 18-year-old named Will Cohen on Upwork, a freelance website. He was going into his first year at Boston University and had self-taught himself Swift, the language that IOS applications are written in.”

With the launch of the CampU app, their “main goal for the app was to create a sense of community” Lombardozzi said. “When I’m scrolling through Instagram, I have a ton of content in my feed from my friends at home … We wanted to make an app that had all of your college content in one place.”

The app combines themes from popular student-run Elon Instagram pages such as Barstool Elon and Overheard Elon but “with no followers or anyway to block connectivity.” Crocker says they “hope to promote the unique culture of Elon while providing a place to get a feel for what’s happening everyday on campus.”

To publicize CampU, Crocker says they’ve been using personal Instagram stories, but “are implementing some fun Homecoming and Halloween Snapchat filters … Hopefully you’ll see our name around campus.” 

As the app moves forward, Lombardozzi says the group is looking for engagement from “North Carolina schools in the near future, hopefully gaining a ton of traction and word of mouth, then we hope to see the app expand to schools nationwide.”

CampU is free to download from the app store. All it takes to set up your account is your Elon email and then you’re set to join the community. Check it out and support our peers.