FlipFlop, a brand new social media app, made its debut about a month ago. With a strong focus on college life and interconnectedness, the app’s mission statement is to help students discover clubs, social events and new friendships.

Alex Grzechowski, a junior majoring in economics, first developed the idea behind FlipFlop during syllabus week of his freshman year.

“Many clubs and Greek life would slide paper notes under my dorm room door as an invitation to their event,” Grzechowski wrote in an email. “Simply put, I thought that this inconvenience could be translated to a social networking application.”

With his brother tackling the business side of their fledgling project, Grzechowski spent the next two years learning the programming language Swift so he could eventually program the app.

“Both my brother and I had little to no knowledge when it came to programming fall of 2021,” Grzechowski wrote. “While I was learning code, my brother was learning how to grow a brand and a business. We divided and conquered and when I felt ready to code the app, we jumped right into it and never looked back.”

College students can already communicate with each other on campus through YikYak, but Grzechowski had concerns regarding YikYak’s interface which FlipFlop aims to address.

“YikYak is an anonymous feed with no post credibility that provides redundant information to other students,” Grzechowski wrote. “FlipFlop users have integrity and credibility that instills a sense of purpose behind each post. Due to posts being anonymous, it can also lead to an unsafe university environment. FlipFlop gives a face to the user, thus making each post uploaded with personality and proper intent.”

FlipFlop sports an intuitive and inviting interface that makes finding other people on campus a no-brainer. Once a user has selected their campus, they are free to see a feed for general posts and a feed for events at their college. Additionally, users can engage with students from other schools through the explore tab, further emphasizing the app’s focus on connection. FlipFlop is available to over 120 colleges nationwide, with plans to someday expand internationally.

“Our goal is to encourage students to be engaged with their university through joining clubs, attending school events, attending social events, etc.,” Grzechowski wrote. “We hope to have FlipFlop in every university nationwide with it being the number one social networking platform catered to college students. A future goal is to create a college lifestyle brand that coexists with the app.”

Part of what makes FlipFlop so accessible is the cues it takes from other social media platforms, allowing users to create polls, save posts and events and upload images and links in addition to the typical text posts. All the features one would want in a social media app are here, just focused to better, capture the college experience and bring students together.

Grzechowski emphasized this focus further.

“We hope students gain a sense of unity and also direction with their university while using FlipFlop,” Grzechowski wrote. “College is often a triumphant journey. Finding a group of relatable people and finding activities students want to be involved in can be difficult. FlipFlop adds value to ‘the college experience’ by providing more opportunities for users to not only connect with other students at their university but discover what is happening socially around campus as well.”