Chaz Phillips ’18 and Danny Miro-Chinea ’19 don’t want students to be caught in the cold when there’s a good party nearby. The pair are part of a team of American and Czech college students along with former member of the Bowdoin Class of 2019 Josh Hollis that developed an app, Movez, that seeks to simplify party-going. After a beta test as Bowdoin last weekend, the app will be available on the App Store in the next few weeks. It has the potential to increase attendance at off-campus parties.
“The main point of the app is to make your social nightlife not a hassle and to meet new people,” said Phillips, chief operating officer of the app.
Creating a Movez account requires a “.edu” e-mail address. Once logged in, users can see a map of nearby parties and chat with other Movez users already at a party using an in-app messaging software.
Party hosts can list their event on Movez and invite other Movez users through the app. In order to help hosts manage a guest list, the app encourages partygoers to register for a party.
The app will also provide real-time feedback on the status of any registered party.
“We have something called a ‘lit score,’ [where] you can rate the party one to five with a little fire emoji, so there are certain ways to see if a party is cool,” said Phillips.
Phillips thinks the app would be best used at Bowdoin to help students navigate off-campus parties.
“A lot of times you [want another party] after a [College House] party is done or maybe you’re just not having a good time or it’s not popping at all,” Phillips said.
Hollis said he first came up with the idea for Movez from an unsatisfactory night out with friends in Boston last year.
“We were invited to [a party] and even though we were invited we couldn’t get in because essentially what happened is there was an occupancy limit,” he said. “[Movez] just stemmed from a vision of a platform that could help students know what was an occupancy limit at a given event on their college campus,” he said.
App users create profiles and can “follow” their friends to find parties.
Movez is designed so that publicly listed events appear on a map visible to all Movez users in the area, which may allow uninvited guests to appear at a party. However, Movez users also have the option to list their events privately, in which case their party would not appear on the map.
Maddie Bustamante ’17, who lives off campus, does not think the app is a good idea for off-campus houses.
“I wouldn’t want to publicize a party at my house,” she said. “I think it would work better for on campus houses, for College House parties and stuff.”
She added that the app could be a problem for the Office of Safety and Security if people were to start listing events on the app without formally registering them with the Office of Residential Life.
Phillips pointed to party registration as the app’s primary way to promote safety, as hosts can look at the profiles of registered guests and see who exactly they are.
“Say you see someone who you don’t remember inviting or don’t remember showing up on the list, you can be, like, ‘hey, did you sign up? I don’t remember inviting you or seeing that you were registered on my app,’” Phillips said.
He added that users could indicate if a party is “sketchy” in a party’s comment section.
Although the app will initially be limited to college students, the Movez creators eventually hope to expand the user base to include “all youth 18 to 26,” according to Phillips.
Movez also advertises a feature called “gender ratio,” which lists the gender makeup of a given party based on the registered guests, which might give partygoers a better idea of the party’s vibe.
Miro-Chinea said the group hopes to cultivate particularly large Movez networks in major cities with colleges, such as Boston, New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles. They also hope to co-sponsor events with companies, organizations and clubs. Movez also wants to integrate other services, such as Uber and Venmo, into the app.
Following last weekend’s beta test as Bowdoin, the app’s creators will hold another test this weekend in Boston.
Editor's note, October 31, 2:00pm: This article has been updated to clarify the inclusion of an option in Movez for party hosts to post their parties privately. When parties are private, they are not marked on the map visible to all Movez users.