A team of current and former Ball State students released a social media app this summer, combining aspects of Instagram and Tinder.
Anthony Sparks, a senior communication major, and former student David Rogers, came up with the idea and created Noria LLC.
Noria is a social media application that allows users to post and view photos. When users post photos they have the potential to be viewed by everyone, regardless of whether someone is “following” another person.
Users can either swipe left or right on photos to teach the application which kinds of photos the user enjoys. The application adjusts so the user sees relevant photos in the future.
“That’s kind of what every person’s dream is, for an application to just start to learn about you effortlessly,” Sparks said.
The idea grew from an unlikely source – a fashion blog for men, called Our Friend Tom.
Sparks and Rogers wrote the blog together before deciding to change mediums. Their idea for the app changed from a focus on men’s fashion, to fashion for either gender and finally to photos in general.
The two had to hire an outside source to create the app, since neither of them knew how to code.
When a freelance coder fell through, the two turned to a creative agency that was just starting up. The app would cost them $32,000 to make.
Rogers and Sparks began working toward fundraising and grabbed the attention of several of their peers, including alumnus Brandon Pope.
“It was an idea that separates itself from the others,” said Pope, the company’s vice president of marketing and communications. “Instead of reinventing the wheel, it’s creating a square. It’s creating a whole new shape for social media from what I saw.”
Noria Llc. originally planned on launching the app on June 1. However, after Apple determined the application needed a way to flag inappropriate material, the app wasn’t released until Aug. 8.
“That was the most frustrating part,” Sparks said. “Since we can’t code and we don’t have a developer account to talk to Apple, we have to depend on this creation company, who is also a start-up and has other clients. So we were literally stuck and we couldn’t do anything.”
Pope and Sparks said the app has received mixed reviews so far. Some people find the app pointless, while others see potential.
“The way I see it, this is the very, very, very beginning of a social media application,” Pope said. “If you look at the beginning of Facebook, twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, they weren’t the glossiest and they weren’t the prettiest. I think in terms of look and feel, we actually have a leg up on our competitors.”
The company plans to make improvements to the application, including releasing it for the Android operating system. Sparks said they may look at creating other ideas through Noria LLC in the future, but haven’t solidified anything yet.
Pope and Sparks both said their experiences at Ball State played some role in the creation of the application.
“I think that Ball State journalism encourages digital media participation,” Pope said. “We’re always encouraged to think about digital media and social media and its impact, and put it into our stories and coverage.”
Sparks said the people he met have helped him more than his education at Ball State.
“It would be bad to say Ball State didn’t play a role because it put me in a network of people like Brandon and Michael, who thought the same way,” Sparks said. “We’re open minded. It would be hard to convince someone who wasn’t in college to spend money on a start-up because I don’t think that’s where their minds are at.”
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