A social app that helps college students build real connections

Opportunity

Social platforms for college students optimize for volume: more posts, more follows, more time on screen. That model produces noise and negativity. 25 user interviews confirmed it: students wanted local connection around shared interests, not another algorithmic feed. Circa was built to give them that.

Tagging as the core mechanic

Research pointed consistently toward one problem: students had no reliable way to find people interested in the same things. A raw chronological feed would have reproduced the noise they were already avoiding on other platforms. I committed to a structured tagging system as the core mechanic instead: every post required a tag, which forced intentionality when posting and made the feed filterable by interest.

Soft launch at Texas State

We soft-launched at Texas State University. Users posted and the tag structure held. The signal that came back: people were sharing their socials inside the app and connecting outside it. DMs were the missing retention mechanic; without them, the app had no way to keep the conversation in-app. We built DMs. Bugs elsewhere in the app remained unresolved when the primary developer stepped back before they could be addressed.

Outcomes

1. Soft-launched at Texas State University.
2. Tag-based posting shipped and was adopted. Feed filtering did not ship before the project ended.
3. DMs built after users revealed they were routing around the app to connect. Bugs unresolved when the primary developer stepped back.
4. The full value proposition (post, filter, connect) was never realized as a complete loop.