UVU student's app unlocks messages at specific locations

UVU student's app unlocks messages at specific locations

(Mezy)


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OREM – A Utahn has created a new social app that allows users to send picture messages that can only be unlocked at a specific location.

Mezy, created by Utah Valley University student Jared Bridegan, began as a way to keep people from texting and driving. One day, he flippantly said to his wife, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just send a message to UVU, then that way when I got to school I could get it instead of while I was driving.”

Then he realized he might be onto something.

The app allows the sender of a photo message to choose the location at which their message will be received. It does not, however, track your location for your friends to see, like the app Find My Friends.

“We inadvertently invented a whole new way of messaging which allowed people to control where their friends could view their messages,” Bridegan wrote in an email. “With Mezy, messaging is now linked to locations and greatly changes the emotion behind a message because people can control where their pictures or videos are viewed.”

A message will wait in perpetuity until the recipient arrives at the specified address, Bridegan said.

“What we noticed was people were using it to almost document their daily life. Like, ‘This is where I got my first kiss,’ ‘This is where I was in my first car accident,’” Bridegan said to KSL.com. “They started posting Mezzies to locations, so that way when people came to those locations down the road, it was almost like looking at a message in a bottle, because they got to experience that message at a certain location the user wanted them to.”

Through user feedback, the app evolved into something mostly social – a way to associate a message with a particular place.

“It’s an entirely different way of interacting with places,” Bridegan told KSL.com.

The app recently reached just more than 70,000 followers. It can be downloaded in the App Store of Mezy’s website.

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Celeste Tholen Rosenlof

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