Wigo, the app that helps college kids meet up and go out, has today opened up the service beyond just .edu users. The company is calling it Wigo Summer, and 99 percent of the marketing focus is going towards New York and Boston, where there are large amounts of recent college graduates.
The app originally launched back in the beginning of 2014 and offered tools for college kids on the same network to post what they were doing and invite friends to join. Users can post pictures and videos and messages on various events, all of which are erased at 6am the next morning to start fresh.
Tinder cofounders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen came on as investors, and the app grew over the last year to around 50,000 registered users.
Today, however, the app will no longer require a .edu email address to onboard, so anyone in the world will be able to download the app and begin sharing what they’re up to. Interestingly enough, Wigo founder Ben Kaplan dropped out of college during his sophomore year to run Wigo full-time, and has since not been able to fully use the app outside of the Wigo HQ testing environment.
“I am really excited to actually be able to use the app again,” said Kaplan. “I’ve been using it with about 15 employees and 15 investors so far, and now I’ll get to use it as a Bostonite, and I can’t wait.”
The app also underwent a huge makeover, which Wigo founder Ben Kaplan says should be credited to Sean Rad.
With the geolocation update, users will be able to see local events posted by both your friends from Facebook as well as suggested friends of friends, based on event attendance and mutual chats. The update also offers a highlight reel from last week’s events that are available to view for seven days and then disappear.
Wigo has raised a total of $1.4 million at a valuation of $14 million. Kaplan says that it has been downloaded by at least one person on more than 1,300 campuses and that more than 75 college campuses have been unlocked. (Wigo requires between 400 and 1200 downloads of the app on any given campus, depending on its size, before the service will be unlocked.)
I asked Kaplan whether or not he was concerned about diluting the Wigo community by allowing non-college students to join.
“Rad convinced me very quickly that the people you market the app to are the people who are going to use it,” said Kaplan. “We are watching very closely how people use the app and can quickly add in features that allow users to only show people of a certain age.”
Wigo has been testing Wigo Summer for the past week and has thus far added 21,000 new users to the platform.
This marks a big transition for Wigo as it gets out of the college space and into the real world. If you want to check out Wigo Summer, head to the App Store now and download the app.
