Below are excerpts from my first blog post in Huffington Post College on the day of the section’s launch - for the full text, click the link
One day during sophomore year, I was walking in front of the campus center when an idea hit me — there needs to be an easy way to offer my peers (read: myself) a risk-free way of expressing a crush wherein their (my) identity is only revealed if there’s a match.
It was then that I built the “CrushFinder.” Within 24 hours of its launch the day before Valentine’s Day in 2007, 30% of Princeton’s student body used it — and it was incredibly exciting and kind of surprising to see it catch on so quickly.
It was from the CrushFinder that GoodCrush.com was born. The success stories I heard and requests from other schools showed that there was a desire for this service beyond our campus. Valentine’s Day 2009, GoodCrush’s CrushFinder debuted successfully at other schools in partnership with the respective student governments.
GoodCrush was forged out of a core premise: simple web functionality can spark new or enhance pre-existing social and romantic interactions in dense and insulated social networks - namely college campuses. The goal is not to have users spend time on the site, but rather complement and catalyze off-line activities and opportunities. Simply put, we are “connecting student bodies.”
We officially launched with a lot of buzz and excitement on February 8th. Stay tuned, it should be a fun journey.
