When browsing through the colorful website, one might think of it as a sort of Facebook for towns. Townnected.com is a new website developed by three NDSU college students, who took home $5,000 and first place in the Service Track at the 2015 Innovation Challenge.
Townnected website unites neighbors
The website covers every town/city in the U.S. Once you find your town, you can become a member and interact with other town members. Users can post photos to a community-wide photo album, access a town calendar, or write in the discussion board, for example.
The creators are Wyatt Mund, freshman, his brother Landon Mund, sophomore, and their friend Andrew Martinson, freshman. All three are from Melman, ND, a smaller town with 700 people. Wyatt came up with the idea last summer, after an event came through their town and they completely missed it.
“There were probably flyers up but there was really no promotion,” he said. “We thought that’d be sweet if there was a way that everyone could see something.”
He took the idea to the other two team members, and at first they were doubtful on how this would turn out. So Wyatt, who says he’s “always loved messing with computers,” started doing some simple coding on his own, and then hired a developer to help. After seeing how the site was coming along, the other two joined the team.
A few months later, and they now have $5,000 from the NDSU Innovation Challenge backing them up.
“My heart almost stopped for a moment,” Wyatt said, when they announced they had won. He said he had promised the team if they won, they’d all have a steak dinner. They ate well that night.
There are currently 113 town members of the Fargo, ND home page. Scrolling through the announcements, one can see a variety of posts from a variety of people. A few days ago, somebody posted a “Community” post about the recent Fargo Film Festival. Further down, there’s a warning post about a road closure and weather conditions. There’s also sports announcements about recent games, and deal posts like trivia at Rhombus Guys with half off pizza.
In addition, your hometown can connect with other towns across the country. You can ‘favorite’ other towns, and follow-up on their news as well.
As for the money, they hope to use to further market Townnected and build their user base. If they succeed in that, they will move on to building a mobile app.
Competition?
One might, like myself, question as to whether this is an original idea. I brought up the app Buzzcut, an app that shows users upcoming events and deals in the area. Others, Wyatt said, have compared it to a Facebook page for a city.
What Wyatt sees as unique to Townnected, is that it is primarily focused on connecting towns and is completely operated “by people, for people.” Your posts don’t only appear to those who ‘like’ your page, but are instead shown in an open platform to everyone. This has a lot of value, he said, especially for small businesses looking for promotion and for keeping smaller communities informed.
“There’s nothing that’s tailor made for town news, and every little town,” he said. “There really isn’t something like that.”
Check out Townnected for yourself, right here or watch the below preview!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnvtkAtSrPk]
Photos courtesy of Townnected and Haneys Photography.
