gives students 24 hours to build an original application. The team of Campanella, Ponizil, Tengchao Zhou, Nabil Hassein, Randall Hunt, and Paul Lee are students from NYU, West Carolina University, and University of Waterloo. (Rebecca Zhou, who worked with the inaugural class of TechStars NY as an in-house designer, played along for the demo but is not part of the LoCreep team.) Campanella says LoCreep is not yet seeking funding but will once there is a solid business plan in place.
Rather than create native mobile apps, the LoCreep team seems content with the Web-based version. Campanella and Ponizil said their website should render properly on most smartphones. “It functions just like an app, it works like an app,” Ponizil said during the question-and-answer portion of event.
Posting information about others on the Web can be risky, particularly in the dating arena. LoCreep is working hard to avoid turmoil like that suffered by Miami-based website DontDateHimGirl.com. DontDateHimGirl launched in 2005 as a portal for women to post stories about alleged cheaters. The site included photos and stories to, in theory, caution other women about philandering men but verification of such allegations was left entirely in the hands of the person posting the details. That raised questions of libel and DontHateHimGirl said in 2010 it would eliminate the database of accused men and focus on other content relevant to dating.
LoCreep, in contrast, scrapes out personal identifiers before the content is shared. Campanella says the telephone number of the target is also blocked from the friends of the original user. It is too soon to tell if LoCreep can evolve into a bigger operation, but they at least seem cognizant of some of the trouble sharing too much information on the Web can create. “We don’t want to make people look stupid,” Ponizil said. “Everything is anonymous.”
