Christina VarvisStudents may recognize the blue theme and squirrel silhouette of Chitter — a new campus-based message board app which is being downloaded roughly 200 times a day since its launch.
On Chitter, students post anonymously to a board exclusive to University of Alberta. “Chits” range from deep confessionals to raunchy jokes, and can also include photos. Posters are saved the anxiety of having their name attached to what they write.
Though it looks similar to other smartphone message board apps, such as Yik Yak, Chitter is specifically designed as a platform for the online university community. Registrants require a university email address, determining which school’s wall they can post in. This makes it a great platform for campus inside jokes, developer Mark Galloway said.
Users can comment on posts, which are linked to their Facebook accounts as opposed to being anonymous. The original poster, however, remains anonymous if they comment in their own thread.
“(Chitter) is a way for shy people to connect with people who aren’t shy,” Galloway said.
Users can also upvote posts they like or agree with, as well as downvote. Chitter uses a community monitoring system, where five downvotes will automatically result in a post being deleted. This is typically used to remove obscene or offensive posts. Users can also be reported, which administrators said will be taken seriously. But so far, the community dynamic has been positive.
U of A students may have seen screenshots of Chitter uploaded on the UAlberta Confessions Facebook page. Along with messaged-in confessions, the page now posts screenshots from Chitter. The two are working closely together, developer Tamara Bain said.
A team of six University of Alberta students and alumni started the project in May, with two from the Faculty of Business and four from the Department of Computing Science.
“(The business team) basically said there’s these confession pages on campus and they had read a few of them, and they’d seen that people really like to comment. But a lot of the time they’re scared to, especially if you’re a new student, or a shy person,” Bain said. “It can be hard to put yourself out there and say ‘Hey is anyone around campus?’ or ‘Hey what is everyone doing?’ just because you don’t want to be judged.”
After working throughout summer, Chitter was launched on the first day of the Fall term.
Users also receive a single referral code to invite others not affiliated with the U of A into the community — just one, so that walls remain campus-exclusive. This is useful for those who have friends that will be attending the U of A soon, but don’t have a student email address yet, Bain said.
Chitter has walls for all of the Western Canada universities so far, but so far most of its users are from the U of A. Different universities can look at each others’ walls, but cannot post to them. The team plans on expanding outside the app’s current range as it becomes more popular. Campus groups can also request their own walls within university communities. For example, Lister Hall has one.
Activity on the app has been fun and clean as of launch, Galloway said.
“Everything’s been super positive, everything’s getting upvoted,” he said. “With us it’s just people talking, and they’re having fun.”
Download links to the app can be found on the Chitter website.
