It all started at the University of Southern California with a pen and a trusty notebook. Three years ago, the pen and paper turned into a mobile app called Hangtime where viewers can see all the local events around town and campus.
Creator of Hangtime, Karl Jacob, said that when he arrived at USC, he was the only one from his entire town. He knew no one and knew nothing about the new town he was living in. Jacob would go around campus and ask people what events were going on around town or where interesting things were happening and catalog them in a notebook.
“I became known as the guy to go to if you wanted to find things to do,” Jacob said.
After he graduated and moved on to advise many companies, including Facebook, Jacob decided to create Hangtime. He said the app gathers all the Facebook events going on around a particular campus, including other events such as concerts, museum openings, art shows, bowling tournaments and more.
Jacob said Hangtime is more of a discovery app that allows people to hunt through the list of hundreds of events they could be interested in, rather than only having a list of four events to choose from.
The app is aimed at incoming college freshmen because Jacob believes that one of the hardest things for someone new to do is figure out what’s going on around campus.
“The first priority is ‘where is my dorm room,’ ‘where are my classes,’ but the very next thing is ‘what am I going to do socially?'” Jacob said. “And for college students this information is very limited, and they have to get details by word of mouth. So basically the events you know about are based on who you happen to know on campus.”
Jacob said Hangtime gives users a feed of events that are going on, and lists almost everything that is going on around is a huge leg up versus the school newspaper or calendar of events.
“Because of my experience in college, we wanted to make sure we solved that problem for college students,” Jacob said.
However college students aren’t the only ones using the app. According to Jacob, people in large cities and other countries use Hangtime to find out events that are going on around them. Travelers can use Hangtime to help find events and places around new cities, Jacob said.
He believes that Hangtime will help incoming college students find interesting things to do and help them meet new people as well as help students figure out what is going on in their new environment.
“I think it is the best way to connect to the events that are going on around campus and your friends that are going to them,” Jacob said.
Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected]