Mission 16 · Education
Buzly: Student social app and applicant chat for a US university
A social app for the students of Sacramento State, where applicants can also talk to current students before they enrol. For Buzly, a startup set up by Sacramento State students, we built the Buzly.edu web platform and rebuilt the Buzly app for iOS and Android, from June 2023 to March 2024.
- Client
- Buzly
- Industry
- Higher education
- Platforms
- iOS, Android and web
- Built with
- React Native, Next.js, Strapi
01 · Business context
The problem
After months of online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, many students felt cut off from their school and from each other.
Buzly's founders wanted one place where students could handle both their studies and their social life: campus updates matched to their major and interests, groups around their hobbies, and chats with other students, without a flood of notifications.
They also wanted to help the university reach applicants: to let prospective and admitted students meet current students before they enrol, and to make the move to university easier.
The client
Buzly
A startup set up by a team of Sacramento State students, working with the university's Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Their idea was a safe social space just for the university's students, where each student gets campus updates that fit their major and interests.
02 · Key features
What we built
Two products on one backend: Buzly.edu, a web platform in Next.js with a Strapi backend, and the Buzly app for iOS and Android, rebuilt in React Native with Expo. Chats and feeds run on GetStream. Four developers built the web platform in eight months; three rebuilt the app in three months. These are the key features.
-
Chats, groups and feeds
Students chat one to one and in groups, join or start groups around their interests, and post updates, photos and comments in feeds.
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Notifications students control
Each student chooses the type and the number of notifications they get.
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Champions for applicants
A chat that the university can embed on its website lets prospective and admitted students talk to current students, called champions, before they enrol.
-
Dashboards for university staff
Staff import lists of admitted and current students, invite champions, moderate chat rooms and follow reports on conversations, messages, engagement and the share of admitted students who enrol.
03 · Results
What changed
We built the web platform in eight months and rebuilt the app in three, as one system in which each school gets its own settings.
Key achievements
- One system for many schools: each university and college gets its own settings, and Sacramento State got its own colours, logo and sign-in screens.
- The web platform took eight months, and the rebuilt app three.
- The Buzly app is still on the App Store (October 2026).
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