Monday, December 31, 2012

College Twist 2012 Highlights

Looking Back on the 2012 Year

The countdown begins as an eventful year quickly fades away, and a new year takes its place. 2013 is quickly approaching with great expectations for the new college networking application. A lot of exciting things happened for College Twist in 2012. Check out the highlights for this past year.



College Twist Releases iPhone and Android App

Screen Shot of Heat Map
CT brought the college networking experience right to the students' finger tips. The users can see events, photos from the latest gatherings, or discussions on the new app. CT enabled some unique revolutionary features to the social media world. They introduced the Heat Map, and Shoutout feature. Users can now see, real time, where other CT users are and what is happening in their area. Don't worry...you can't see WHO that person is (not so creepy after all), it only shows a heat index for the hot spots. They took it a step further by showing Shoutouts (similar to tweets) that are tagged at your current location. 
Screen shot of Shoutouts
For example, a user at the football game takes an awesome photo of the packed stadium cheering for their team after they just scored the first touchdown. The user posts' the photo shout out on the app, which makes it visible to all spectators, showing that the photo shout out was taken at the stadium.
Users also have the ability to post text shout outs, and load an already existing photo from their library. This is perfect for people trying to promote the event that they are hosting, showing real time what is going on at the location. Soon to come, in 2013, are video shout outs!



 Made an appearance at PACURH 2012 (SJSU)

Founders at the opening ceremonies speech.


It was a cold week in San Jose, California, during the first week of November, when the founders of CT traveled across the country to introduce College Twist to the West Coast. Where better to introduce, than at PACURH 2012? Attending the conference were over 300 students, made up from 30+ schools from Washington to California, even Canada and Hawaii! Representing these schools were student leaders from housing and residential life, and their advisors. College Twist worked very hard to set up the application to host the conference, and allowed the conference participants to use all the CT features that weekend. Participants had tools to see the conference events, post photos from their experience, and even use the heat map to see where the  destinations were. To top it all off, there were hundreds of shout outs during the weekend, highlighting the great times the students were having. 
Students getting ready for the awards ceremony.


From this experience, CT was in high demand for an expansion to the West Coast. Picking two of the schools (Sonoma State University and California State University Fullerton), they were able to expand and give those schools this social media tool for their college experience.

Broke 2000 users

It wasn't long before CT had gained users. On October 19th (just a couple months after the fall semester started), CT did just that! Ending the 2012 year CT currently has 2,491 users and expects to grow rapidly in 2013. Since the app was released, middle of the 2012 year, CT will also end the year with over a 1,000 downloads on the iPhone and Android app.

College Twist merges with sister company AppSuite

In order to be a more compelling place to advertise, CT merged with AppSuite. AppSuite is a leading provider of iPhone and Android application development for the Food and Beverage industry. AppSuite develops low-cost restaurant apps for fine dining restaurants, casual restaurants, coffee shops, bars and clubs. AppSuite’s restaurant app and content management system (CMS) allows restaurateurs to rapidly deploy an iPhone or an Android App without the high cost of developing their own app. AppSuite’s CMS platform allows the restaurateur to conveniently build, brand and expand their business to the growing population of mobile users.
Screen shots of current apps made by AppSuite





Tuesday, October 30, 2012

10 Things you didn't know you could do on CollegeTwist.com:


The founders of College Twist were students at FAU when they realized the need to join a campus through social media other than your traditional existing social media giants. They created a more "open" experience that allows users to connect with other students, organizations, and the campus as a whole through one centralized location. A site where all the users have one thing in common; their university. Here are 10 things you didn't know you could do on collegetwist.com:


1) View every aspect of the campus' page. From every Club & Organization, Residence Hall, Sport Team, to every local hot spot around the campus.
  • See what that organization has to offer through the recent albums, events and discussions.




2)  Add pages to your favorites to get updates on the things YOU wanna see.
  • By clicking the button "Make Favorite" on the top right of a page, it will automatically update you on photos, events and discussions posted on that page straight to your dashboard.


3) Create events and invite people through email, friends on College Twist and friends on Facebook!
  • If you want to maxamize the participation at your next event, we give you the ability to reach out to a bigger audience. 
         4) You can create Photo albums and others can add their photos to complement the album.
  • On College Twist we allow anyone to upload photos to a page. We believe that when a user shares THEIR view it shows the diversity of the campus or the event that they attended. 
  • Don't worry you can flag images for inappropriateness and for an image that is in the wrong place!

5) Any user can create a discussion to open up the communication for each page.
  • This feature is perfect for opening up to the college community. Either giving your feedback or see what others have to say is what makes it great. 
  • Use this tool to get ideas, post information about upcoming events, etc...


6) See any other college and what it has to offer.
  • Right now CT has 10 different schools to view. You can access any other school and make certain things at that campus your favorite too. 
  • Connect with other students or organizations at other campus' and see what they are doing at their university.
 


7) View a concentration of CT users through our heat map.
  • We show you a heat index of where the hot spots are on and off campus.
  • We do this without showing you who is actually there but by just showing a general heat for each user running the app. 



8) Shout out at your location to show people what's going on at your location.
  • You can view a collection of "shoutouts" by the students on campus.
  • See what is going on and where its happening.
  • See a current snapshot of on and off campus events.
  • Take or load a photo to show people what's going on (Video coming soon).





9) Customize your organization's page.
  • We allow you to upload custom content to your page.
  • Show others more information about your organization by uploading a banner up top and even HTML on the right hand side.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Scholarship Contest Starts TODAY!


Today is the day!

College Twist officially starts recording the statistics for the "Most Active User Scholarship Contest."
The contest will provide 3 cash prizes to the top 3 most active users. 
  1. $2000
  2. $1000
  3. $750
Even if you are graduating you can still compete in this contest! We will be recording statistics until November 12th and will be announcing the winners sometime soon after that. We will provide more info on this as it gets a little closer. To all FAU students, may the best and most active user win! Good luck to all!

If you need any more details, click the link below for more info regarding the contest.

Don't forget about downloading the new mobile app for android and iPhone! You can use the mobile app to everything needed to compete in the contest as well!
Download app here!

Download the app here

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

College Twist's most active user Scholarship

The FAU Spring semester is quickly approaching, struggling to make ends meet?

College Twist is giving out three scholarships to the top 3 most active users!
 

http://info.collegetwist.com/ct-scholarship-contest/


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Android and iPhone Apps are LIVE!

Android and iPhone apps are currently live!

College Twist is going into Week 2 with both the iPhone and Android apps live in the app stores! Currently CT has had over 300 downloads and has been increasing each day more and more! 

If you haven't seen the apps and the features here is a quick video to show you what its all about:

By the way...the apps are FREE! Spread the word, the more people who have the app the better the experience will be! Thanks to all the CT fans!

Links to Download the app:

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

College Twist Announcements : College Twist Releases Android App

College Twist Announcements : College Twist Releases Android App: College Twist is happy to announce that the CT app is finally in the Google Play Market! For all you android users you can now download this...

College Twist Releases Android App

College Twist is happy to announce that the CT app is finally in the Google Play Market! For all you android users you can now download this exciting new app by clicking on this link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.collegetwist&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5jb2xsZWdldHdpc3QiXQ.
What is in this app:

  • Heat Map
    • College Twist has a revolutionary heatmap that allows the users to see concentrations of other users without giving out any demographic information. You are able to find out where the "hot spots" are and compare those to the university campus, college events, local restaurants, and many other points of interest on and around campus. 
    • With a simple push of a button you are able to filter out what you want to show on the map depending on what you are interested in.


  • Shout Outs
    • Once you have found your point of interest (POI) you can then share live discussions and photos, at your current location or that POI, with other users on College Twist using our Shout Out wall.
  • Photo and Discussion Upload
    • You can now upload photos to current albums that exist or create your own Album!
    • Start a discussion Topic and reply to other people's threads.








Don't worry iPhone users...The iPhone upgrade will be available as soon as they approve the update.

Monday, September 17, 2012

College Twist launches new upgrade

It is about that time! CT has been working hard to finish development for the new iPhone and Android app that will allow the user to contribute photos, events, discussions as well as participate in the heatmap. All the development is finally finished...the team is now performing some load testing to monitor how well everything works with concurrent users. The app's should both be submitted this week! College Twist will be hosting a scholarship contest when everything is released to kick off the marketing campaign. CT will be giving out three scholarships to the top three most active users! Stay tuned for more info on this contest.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

College Twist Partners up with Switch My Books!

College Twist looks to help students find everything for college needs!


CollegeTwist.com was started for one sole reason; to be the one stop shop for all the student's needs. A place to come and see events, photos and discussions just at YOUR college. Recently the founders of both Switchmybooks.com and CollegeTwist.com have come together to help college students get what they need most out of their college. Switch My Books is the Social Network for college students to buy and sell textbooks directly with each other on campus. By partnering up with SMB, they will be promoting students who are using CT to buy and sell there textbooks with other students at there university. You can start posting your books now to get a head start on the end of the year!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

CollegeTwist.com started out as an open College Networking site started by two FAU students Brandon Forschino and Patrick Daleen. Recently they have added a revolutionary heat map that shows you where the College Twist users are on and off campus...and NO you can not see who they are! It just shows a concentrated heat index and shows that there are people there. That was not enough. What is going on at that location? They also added a shout out feed that shows what  users are saying about that location. You can see text, video and photo shoutouts from what is currently going on. If you want to see this Heat Map go to this link and watch the demo!
http://fau.collegetwist.com/pg/groups/833/