CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, Greston Gill’s sex was misidentified. Gill is a male. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

A team of entrepreneurial app creators is trying to help Syracuse University students meet more of their classmates with a new dating app called SmileBack.

Dan Berenholtz, Venkat Dinavahi, Doron Berenholtz and Roy Goldschmidt launched the app — similar to Tinder — that allows users to send an anonymous “smile” to another user on their campus. When someone receives a smile, the receiver chooses between five photos.  If the receiver chooses the sender, the two become a “match,” earn a free drink at a local bar and may begin messaging on the app.

“You’ll go through your four years in college and you’re not going to have the opportunity to meet even a fraction of those people,” Dan Berenholtz said.  “You’re going to have a lot of missed connections with people you might have otherwise have wanted to meet.”

Berenholtz said he believes that SmileBack can offer this opportunity to students.  He said SmileBack is set apart by the fact that it is interactive, almost like a game.  He said other dating apps like Tinder only allow users to be involved more passively.

He added that the free drinks will be provided at some of the bars closest to the SU campus, although no final decisions have been made. The app doesn’t currently offer a meet-up option for those under 21, but Berenholtz said it might be a future development.  While the team is still trying to reach out to students below the legal drinking age, Berenholtz said he thinks they can still enjoy the app without partaking in the free drinks.

SmileBack has already been launched at a number of other universities including Columbia University, the University of Virginia and Binghamton University.

To market the new app, Berenholtz reached out through a number of media sites including Facebook and sent an email to a number of SU students.  Berenholtz said he accessed a number of student email addresses through a friend.

Jill Ouikahilo, the director of communications from the Division of Student Affairs said that, as far as she knows, this email was not approved by SU.

“Any communication to the student Listserv needs permission from either Academic Affairs, Public Affairs or Student Affairs, and it is also against university policies to send such an email like that,” Ouikahilo said in an email.

Greston Gill, a senior accounting and finance major, received an email about SmileBack and downloaded the app, he said.

“It’s more of a social networking site in a sense that probably someone that you don’t necessarily know will probably smile at you,” Gill said. “They smile back and I’m going to smile back and then it builds relationships.”

Emma Thomson, a freshman chemical engineering major, downloaded the app but deleted it because she was uncomfortable with the messages she’d been receiving from one of her matches. Although it wasn’t for her, Thomson said she thinks that the app has a place on college campuses and is a fun idea for meeting new people.

“It’s better for shyer people, too,” Thomson said.

Julian Nelums, a freshman international relations major, uses the app but sees both the positives and negatives to it.

He said the app provides a new way to connect. “I feel like it’s eHarmony for college students almost, but it’s not that serious at the same time,” he said. “And cons, I’d say: When you think about it, it’s kind of creepy from what could happen and stuff like that.”

Berenholtz, one of the creators, said overall the app has received positive feedback. He hopes to launch the app in most major colleges by the end of the academic year.

“We’re planning on expanding to colleges across the country,” Berenholtz said. “We want this to be the app that every college student thinks of when they ask themselves ‘how am I going to know who else goes to my college besides the people that I sit next to in class?’  This is the app that they want to use.”

Published on November 7, 2013 at 1:18 am

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu