Locava, a student-built social media platform set to launch on Friday, aims to help young people explore their local communities. The app allows users to post and browse recommendations for places in their area, with an emphasis on hidden or lesser-known locations.
“On Locava you can find not even just things to do, but the things that locals do,” said Will Gottfried ‘27, Locava’s head of outreach. “The hidden things and the things that you wouldn’t just find on Google Maps.”
Locava users can create posts for spots in their local communities that they want to remember or share with others. Each post is accompanied by a description and picture of the area, activities to do at the spot and a link with specific coordinates and directions to the area from Google Maps.
Those browsing the app can filter their searches for specific places, like swimming holes and parks, or for different activities, like biking and stargazing.
Gottfried described the app as a “blend of Google Maps and TikTok” and claimed that Locava “fills a void in the market.”
“Nothing like it exists,” Gottfried said.
Wary of sending hordes of visitors to the coolest spots, Locava’s privacy settings let users determine how many people they want to view their post, whether that be a thousand, three or just themselves.
“We’re very considerate of the idea that it could damage spots,” said Locava CEO Judson Dunne ’27 of the app.
The app will launch pre-populated with posts from certain college towns, including Easton.
“When people download the app for the first time, we’ll have the ‘Top 10 Spots Near Lafayette’ already built into the thing,” Dunne said.
The other minds behind the platform are head of relations Ethan Melgar ‘27, Konstantinos Ioannou ‘27, who helps with outreach, and Veer Patel, a first-year student at Northeastern who is the app’s head of marketing.
Dunne, who also serves as the main coder on the project, said he began officially working on the platform during his freshman year at Lafayette College.
“We were all very bored,” Dunne said. “We just kept having the problem that there were not a lot of cool places to go out and explore around campus.”
He said that while they could find interesting spots by browsing various websites, there wasn’t an easy way to share those finds with others.
“We fixed that by building an app that gives you just all the media you could ever need, with the directions built in,” Dunne said.
The creators of Locava said that they hope the app inspires people to take action and form communities of people who are passionate about doing things.
“We hope to have a worldwide impact on the way that people choose to spend their time, and inspire less just scrolling on your phone in your bedroom, and more going out and exploring this beautiful world we live on,” Dunne said.
