Trying to Make Something, Out of Nothing

My high school rowing club when I started there, was so small that really no one knew who we were. We would show up to races and other teams would look at their heat, see our name and go, "Saint Andrew? I guess if we have never heard of them we can beat them, one less team to worry about". However, after one season our club got several new coaches whose job was to turn nothing, into something. I am proud to say (and jealous that I was not there for it) they are now one of the fastest high school clubs in our region! Building the team to what it is now took several years of marketing, recruiting, and special events to get our name out there and to get people in the Atlanta area interested in rowing, but even more interested in rowing for our club. Through out this post I will post a timeline of pictures of how incredible the development of the team was and still is.

This is the whole varsity and novice team when I first started (only three people missing)

So what does this have to do with social media? Recently I have been bored with my typical social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat etc. I went exploring to see if there was something new out there for me to waste my time with and use to help me procrastinate with. I discovered that some online dating websites are also considered social media, one in particular named Bumble. Most people would know this as an alternative to Tinder where you swipe right if you think the person is cute and swipe left if you do not like them and if you both swiped right you get to chat with one another. Bumble has recently come out with new settings to where you can change the purpose of your account. You can sign up for Bumble Date, Bumble BFF, and Bumble Bizz. Turns out Bumble Date has been a popular app that has been out for a while, and the BFF and Bizz feature are both fairly new. That is why it made me want to compare my old rowing team that had a base but got an improvement by hiring new coaches with new ideas to help us grow to Bumble that already had a base but has added on the two new features to grow in popularity/users.

New coach, same amount of people in the previous picture, except this is just the varsity squad!

Instead of doing homework one day I decided to sign up for Bumble Bizz, in hopes that I could network with some people from my industry or find an employer that is hiring for jobs or an internship. I am not afraid to admit that I have signed up for a dating site like Tinder, so filling out my profile for Bumble Bizz was very similar to your typical dating site. I uploaded 6 professional pictures of myself, put in basic information like my age, education level, my industry type, what I am looking for (internship, part time job, networking etc.), and previous work experience. After my account was set it up, it took me to the main swiping page where I would find people within a set radius who were trying to network, hire or look for jobs and internships as well. Or so I thought...

I swiped left on 10 people and then could no longer continue.

The reality with this category and new feature on this app is that, no one knows about it, and it has not been marketed very well. I was not expecting it to be as developed as something like Linkedin, but was hoping for something more. I went through about ten people until the app gave me a notification that I had swiped through everyone in my area and that I should change my distance radius or come back later (pictured to the left). The people that came up on my feed were fairly old, none of them were in my related industry and they were all looking to network or "make friends". Not going to lie it made me fee slightly uncomfortable so if it does not get better in a month or so I am going to delete it because I am afraid someone is going to take my information and do something with it. Maybe that is slightly dramatic, but still is a little sketchy. Bumble is already a trusted dating application with plenty success, so I assumed that these new features would be successful. The truth is, it is just too new to be as successful as it has the potential to be. I was disappointed because I do really need an internship for over the summer but I remembered that it takes patience for something to grow and become successful.

I believe this goes for any new social media platform, because for the past several years its been a powerhouse of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. If any new social media tries to become as popular as one of those platforms, it is going to take a lot longer than the creators think. I am not trying to discourage people to create new social media platforms, It is just hard and takes a long period of time for a new platform to become a powerhouse. By all means it is possible, like I mentioned with my home rowing team, they are top two in the South East Region now, which seemed impossible. Social media is just such a large part of our lives that it can be hard to create something that takes over peoples lives out of thin air.

This is what I left my senior year, little did I know that the following years after they would gain so much momentum and speed (the varsity and novice team this year has even more girls than this picture taken in 2016). This just proves that compared to the first picture I shared that, growth takes time.