New app created for college students only

By Kevin Tran, Collegiate Times

Erodr, a new social media app for students to expand their networks, is quickly gaining popularity around college campuses across the country and is now finding its way to Virginia Tech.

The Erodr app.

The app, which is available for both Android and Apple smartphones, opened its services to Tech earlier this year and is now scoring more downloads for its features.

“Erodr is an open forum where you can post to other students on campus,” said Ansley Sherwin, junior theatre arts major and campus representative for erodr. “Humor, selfies, pets and stuff about guys and girls are popular topics.”

Sherwin, who is known throughout the erodr community as the “erodr girl,” said the Tech network is becoming quite active.

“There are currently over 1,450 users in the VT network and about 800 unique users check in daily,” Sherwin said. “We see new users sign up every day.”

According to Sherwin, erodr can be described as a mix of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all rolled into one app where users can see posts on daily social dilemmas, classes and other events going on around campus.

Erodr was developed in 2012 by then University of Missouri senior Drew Halliday. Halliday said he first came up with the idea because there was a lack of apps that allowed students to connect with their immediate surroundings.

“There is no social tool that allows students to broadcast to each other without first having learned each other’s name,” Halliday said. “Erodr enables students to have an open forum discussion with classmates.”

He said that he felt most social networking services were too user and egocentric, meaning that students only communicated and shared information to their friends and people they already knew and had formed a connection with.

Read the full article by Kevin Tran of Collegiate Times.