Three undergraduate students yesterday launched the start?upNavlit, a social media platform that provides a private space to navigate between different groups.
The new site, currently available to Tufts students at Navlit.com, features tools to easily manage topics and conversations as well as photos and videos among various groups, or "fires," of friends, family or colleagues in a completely private setting, according to NavlitCo?Founder John Brennan.
The goal of the site is to organize thoughts that might get lost in long email chains or Facebook threads, according to Brennan, who thought of the idea last July.
"I became frustrated with how I was keeping in touch with all of my friends through Facebook messaging threads and email, and I just wanted one private place to do it all," Brennan, a sophomore, said. "The problem we're trying to solve is that groups don't really have a place to go on the Internet to call their own."
The site currently allows people with tufts.edu email addresses to sign up. After becoming a member, a student can invite any person regardless of their affiliation, according to Brennan.
"We're going to let it grow organically outside of Tufts in that way," Brennan said.
Co?Founders Kenneth Cohen and Brennan started Navlit last August and recruited third Co?Founder Mark Timmerman, a sophomore computer science major who does the majority of the coding, in late 2011, according to Brennan.
"It's called Navlit. The idea is that you navigate between your fires, and your fire is lit," he said. "So Navlit, navigate between your lit fires."
What makes it unique is that there are no privacy settings on Navlit; everything is private by default, according to Brennan.
"The idea is you have a different fire for all the groups that define you, and they're totally private," he said. "The fact that they exist is totally foreign except to the people in them."
Navlit focuses on privacy and convenience for its users, according to Cohen, a sophomore.
"It's a private place for group collaboration. It's a website where groups sign on - all of the information contained in a group, or fire, is private," he said. "Groups can have multiple conversations going on at the same time. Everything in our group is self?contained, and everything is backlogged."
The site is not trying to compete with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email, according to Brennan.
"Facebook is great and we love it," he said. "We're not trying to compete with Facebook. Facebook is social and engaging, and then there's email, which is really productive and really efficient, and we're trying to find that sweet spot right in the middle where you can do all of those things - be efficient and social and private."
Brennan noted that Navlit will not replace email elists because there are some things people need to receive immediately. The site aims to facilitate discussion in an online setting that is usually lost in long, unorganized email chains.
"You can't have a meaningful conversation on email without it getting crazy and unorganized, so that's really our big goal," Brennan said. "If I'm working on a group project, it's a great way to organize tasks."
Cohen said Navlit is easier to navigate and more private than Google+. When a friend is added to a fire the only people notified about the connection are those specifically involved, he said.
"The problem with Google+ is that you're friends with a thousand people on Facebook that you're not really friends with, so when you had to move to [Google+] there was this feeling that you had to reorganize those 1000 people even though you're not really friends with them," Cohen said. "So we made it more like an address book, so you only have to add the people you really want to talk to."
The Navlit team launched a private beta version of the site in December 2011 with approximately 100 users, mostly from Tufts, according to Brennan. Brennan, Cohen and Timmerman made changes to the original site based on valuable feedback, according to Brennan.
"The thing is that all of these kids we launched to really like it and they're only in one group and they seem to really like it," Brennan said. "But once you have two, three, four, five groups you really see the value of the site in navigating between these private groups that define your identity."
The co?founders are currently reaching out to angel investors in Boston with help from the CEO at Bullhorn, Inc. Art Papas (LA '97), their advisor, according to Brennan.
The next big step will be developing an application for smart phones, which the team plans to do this summer, along with participating in incubator programs and connecting with venture capital firms, according to Cohen.
"Tufts is a really entrepreneurial minded school, so hopefully we'll get the backing of these students," Cohen said.
