A new social app is ready to hit campus this week after a UF alumnus accidentally launched it on Valentine’s Day last year.
Elan Miller, a 2009 UF advertising and anthropology graduate, co-founded Glimpse, a new social media app powered by Instagram. The Glimpse team is coming to the university this week in hopes of making students download the app, he said.
The app is about starting a conversation with someone based on a common interest. Users can represent themselves with a series of five self-selected photos from Instagram.
When his team tested a prototype in 2014, it went viral in the process and led to an early release. Now the team is looking to engage UF students by delivering surprises and hosting parties in Midtown this week.
Miller recruited a team of students to help him. Josh Firestone, a UF telecommunication and marketing freshman, said the team plans to be visible on Turlington Plaza beginning Tuesday and hand out flowers Wednesday and Thursday.
“To show people the value of our app, instead of handing out fliers to students, we’re going to have people in Glimpse T-shirts handing out flowers with envelopes,” Firestone, 20, said.
They will be stopping by fraternities and sororities with promotional materials Tuesday and Wednesday. The team can also be found at Shuck, a Midtown bar, on Friday.
“It’s all about getting a list of people who like you, and when you see that people like you, you tend to feel good about yourself,” he said.
The 28-year-old said he created Glimpse after using other dating apps that depended solely on a person’s looks.
“A lot of millennials, especially college students, love to document the things that are important to them on Instagram,” he said.
Miller said he doesn’t consider Glimpse a dating app because he doesn’t think college students date anymore.
“Our parents dated,” Miller said. “That’s just not the way we operate anymore.”
[A version of this story ran on page 4 on 4/6/2015 under the headline “Alumni promote app on campus”]
