Meeting new friends ‘At the Pool’

• By Samantha Gum
• Published: August 28th, 2012

The social media site offers the ability to keep up with old friends with the fresh bonus of meeting new ones

At the pool — The social media’s college-friendly layout matches users with people who share the same interests. Photo provided

At the Pool, a new social network created for students, will be hosting an exclusive launch for Liberty University, Aug. 28.

In a world where social networks have become the norm, launches like this are nothing new. It seems as if there is a new network pining for our membership every month. Some sites come and go (remember MySpace?), while others stick around for a while and become part of our daily routine. For many Americans, status updates are read and tweets composed almost as quickly as the computer is opened.

But according to At the Pool founder and CEO, Alex Capecelatro, all of these sites are missing something. The social networks that are most frequented all focus on the same idea: staying connected. Facebook, Twitter and even Pintrest link the user with people they already know.

Yes, it is great to stay in touch with old friends, but those friendships can only go so far. When moving away from home, students are faced with the challenge of finding new friends in a new community.

This is where At the Pool comes in. Rather than attempting to maintain friendships where physical interactions are few and far between, At the Pool strives to give face-to-face interaction. When explaining the motivation for creating the site, Capecelatro said he was “frustrated with how difficult it is to meet new people and how the Internet has been a barrier instead of a gateway. We set out to create a platform that gets us offline.” It seems ironic that a website has been created with the intention of getting people off the Internet and out into their neighborhoods, but that is exactly what At the Pool was created to do.

So what exactly is At the Pool? A press release circulated by Capecelatro refers to it as “a service that connects students around interests, making it fun and easy to meet new people.” As with any other social network, the infamous personal profile must be created. Much of the process is the same: a profile picture can be uploaded, and the typical questions such as location and gender will be asked.

Once the basics have been covered, the next step is to choose interests from a list that covers everything from bacon to sleeping.
It is from these interests that “matches” will be chosen. After the match has been found, a 24-hour time frame for chatting will be given.

On a large campus such as Liberty University, the intent is to find people with similar interests to break out of our social circles. “Like any good host, we make an introduction because we know you’ll get along,” Capecelatro said in the press release.

Yes, this seems like just another invitation to join the fad of social networking sites hoping to make it big, but consider it an invitation to a pool of extraordinary people.

Whether you are new to campus or returning, this is a great chance to make new connections. Dive into the new site by going to AtThePool.com and requesting an invite using “Liberty” as the code. See you At The Pool.