Let’s face it—as millennials, we love social media. Whether it’s Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat or Facebook, anything that helps us stay connected with our friends and family is pretty valuable to us. But not only are we millennials; we’re college students. Along with staying in touch with our friends from back home or friends that attend other colleges, another thing we value is staying up-to-date and involved with things going on at our campus. Wouldn’t it be neat if there was some type of app or social media platform that gave us the best of both worlds? Well, now there is.
With Breez, you can bring college life straight to your smartphone. Now, many of you are probably wondering, “What’s Breez?”
Breez is a college-based app developed by Valdosta State students Terrance “TJ” Johnson, Paige Cox, and Vincent Moore. Breez allows students to stay connected with each other and stay connected with their campus.
As most of us know, campus involvement is a pretty big deal at VSU. There’s something going on or some type of event happening nearly every day on our campus. Although we do receive emails from Trisha Taylor about weekly events, it can sometimes be difficult to keep up with everything occurring on campus. Not to mention, it can be all too easy to forget. However, Breez will eliminate that issue. Missing a great event because you didn’t know about it or forgot that it was coming up will be a thing of the past once Breez is released.
Here’s how it works: each organization on campus can (and are encouraged to) sign up on the app. Once this is done, organizations will be able to post when they are hosting events on campus or in the community. Students on the respective campus will then be notified that an organization has posted about an event being held. Once the time for the events nears, users will be alerted as a reminder that the event is coming up. Users will even be connected to Google Maps so they can be directed to exactly where the event is located.
Aside from being up-to-date on most of the events going on around campus, Breez will also allow students to connect not only with the campus, but network with each other. Breez contains a “lobby” in which students can post pictures, videos and messages. Think of it as a Facebook or Instagram that consists of only the students on your campus. In the lobby, users can choose to view things they are most interested in (based on things they’ve liked) or a live feed that contains all recent posts made to the app. This allows students to have real-time conversations with other students—somewhat like a chat room.
Other features on the Breez app will include polls, forums (which are longer posts used for discussion or open debate), and even the option to look at other colleges’ live feeds. Although students will be able to “peek” at other campus’ posts, they won’t be able to post to their feed—just to keep things local and more intimate. That’s how college-specific the app is.
Students can look forward to downloading and using Breez in February 2016.