What I Learned From Creating a High School Social Network

Julian Rosenblum:

In October 2013, I launched freshStart, an anonymous social networking website for my high school. The premise was simple. Hunter College High School is a small school that starts in 7th grade. By the time you’re in 9th grade, you already pretty much know your entire class. However, these impressions are based on what people were like in middle school. I don’t think I need to elaborate on why that’s a problem. The solution I came up with was an anonymous social networking site exclusively for Hunter students. You sign up, enter your gender, grade, and genders and grades (9–12) of people you’re interested in talking to. You’re then randomly paired with someone who meets these criteria and given a chat interface, with both parties anonymous unless they choose to reveal themselves. This gives you the opportunity to make a second first impression. In short, it was Omegle for Hunter Students plus an appealing elevator pitch. In the Aaron Sorkin version of the story, I created freshStart because I was dissatisfied with my high school romantic situation. He would not be completely wrong on that one.

When I first started talking to people about my idea for freshStart, the responses were mixed. Some people thought it could be really cool and useful. Some people thought it would just be awkward and creepy. I honestly had no idea what it would be like and I was curious. So being the edgy 17-year-old coder that I was (as opposed to the wise, mature 19-year-old coder that I am today), I hacked tog