While many students will be focusing on midterms in the coming weeks, three UA students will be focusing their attention on releasing a new mobile application, SociaLink, which aims to create easier and faster ways to connect with people on social networks.

While attending the Eller Global Cohort in India, Michael Jacobs, a business management junior and SocialLink’s chief executive officer, came up with the idea of creating an app that focuses on revolutionizing the way people use social media sites to connect with each other.

SociaLink will allow people to instantly find each other on social media sites without having worry about spelling names correctly.

On his jungle hike in India, Jacobs started thinking about how difficult it was for him to get the correct name spelling of all the people he was meeting with.

“I meet with a lot of different people and the main thing that I noticed is that I had trouble pronouncing their name and spelling it,” Jacobs said. “At that point, it got difficult to go on Facebook or on LinkedIn to find them or spell their name.”

The app allows users to instantaneously connect with one another through the simple use of a button. Once users download the app, they can pick which media site they want to add friends on. The app currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Users will have the option to select from the four and send an automatic request via Bluetooth to the other party line. The app will automatically send the request to the indicated sites.

“Seeing that we couldn’t spell people’s name or figure them out, we needed a one simple process, and make social networking connecting that much simpler,” Jacobs said.

The social aspect of the app product allows the product to be useful to anyone with a social media account, Jacobs said.

Jacobs immediately began interviewing potential development companies in India that could help him get the app running.

After interviewing several development companies, he hired a development team based in Bangalore, India, that will write the codes and get the app functioning. Along with his team in India, Jacobs brought on two UA students to help with the development of the app. Hector Rosales, a junior studying economics, French and finance and SocialLink’s chief financial officer, and David Orr, a business management senior and the app’s chief marketing officer, took part in the final developmental stages.

Although the idea was kept a secret in the beginning, Orr said, they have slowly been releasing information about what the app does.

“Our main goal right now is to build our user-base and spread our app extremely quickly,” Rosales said.

Jacobs hopes to expand their user-base within a three to six month period of launching the app, to allow for other network companies to see what the app has to offer with today’s technology, he said.

“I knew we were going to build a strong team, but I didn’t know exactly who or how it was going to happen, but it did and it is going in the positive direction,” Jacobs said. “We don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but we will keep going. We are not stopping until this thing becomes huge.”

The most difficult part for Jacobs and his team has been taking the first step and beginning the process. Once the process starts, everything just falls into place, he said.

“We have invested our skills and time into it and that’s what really matter,” Orr said.
During the week, the app will be tested for functionality, and is anticipated to be launched in early November.

Check out SociaLink’s Facebook page for more information.