Whatado app: Making connections and building friendships
Utah State University alumni Alex Watts and Jared Lambert designed a new app called Whatado. The app creates a space for people to share events and activities for others to join and become connected with people in their area who have similar interests.
“When you go into the app, the first thing you’ll see is a list of events,” Lambert said. “This could be somebody from the dorm next to yours playing board games that night or somebody wanting to go skiing on the weekend. They’re looking for people to join in on their hobby or their activity.”
Once you find an event of interest, you can request to join it. The person who posted the event will see the request and your profile and decide whether to accept you into the event. If accepted, all the information needed for the event is given.
Filters for types of events or groups that you want to see on your feed are available.
Within Whatado, group chats can be made to coordinate about events and share activities.
Watts and Lambert said everyone knows about the big events happening on campus like football games and True Aggie Night, but finding parties to go to or a group of people to play volleyball with is harder.
That is exactly what Whatado helps people with.
Watts and Lambert said during their time as students, they wished they had an easier way to make friends and find activities to participate in.
“My goal with this app is to have everybody be able to broaden their horizons and meet other people that do the same things that they like to do,” Watts said.
Lambert and Watts are both from Cache Valley and attended Skyview High School together.
Before Whatado, Lambert had created a test app with the same idea.
Watts, who had thought about ways to help people branch out because of his own college experience, saw Lambert’s post on Facebook one day about the test app.
“It was an older app that he had made that was kind of similar to what I was thinking, and I thought “Oh my gosh, he’s a coder. And it looks like he already kind of had a semi-similar idea. So, let’s team up and let’s get this idea together,’” Watts said.
About a year ago, Watts and Lambert started working on Whatado together. Lambert took charge of the coding while Watts handled the business side — focusing on marketing and design.
Watts and Lambert said that there were privacy concerns for people not wanting to put all their activity information out in the public. In response, they created the request feature.
“You actually don’t see the location or the time until you’re accepted into the event,” Lambert said. “Once you look at them, you’re like, ‘Okay, this is someone I want to invite, they’re accepted to the event.’ And then from there, they’ll be able to see the rest of the details.”
The app is a place where people can make friends and branch out after social restrictions due to the pandemic.
“The rates of loneliness for younger generations are just going up and up, even though we’re becoming more connected online,” Lambert said “And it’s because people are lacking in-person activities, in-person communication, in-person relationships.”
Watts and Lambert said they hope Whatado will help combat the problem of loneliness in society.
Whatado has been officially launched and is available to download on iPhone and Android.