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App Connects Students KEEN on Discovering Shared Interests

Social App Connects Students KEEN on Discovering Shared Interests

Media release: for May 28, 2014

Helping a global community of 150 million students meet around shared interests is the mission of digital startup KEEN.

After struggling to find friends to join him in casual games of tennis, founder Peter Chen started developing a program to connect him with others looking to play. That program grew into smartphone app KEEN, which connects near-by users based on activity and interest.

With KEEN, users create spontaneous activities, anything from grabbing a coffee to a game of football, which other like-minded users browse by hashtag and decide if they are “keen” to meet. It is available to students at participating universities on both Android and iOS.

“We are bridging the gap between online and offline social interaction by creating an easier way for users with shared interests to meet up in real-life,” says Chen. “We want to build a social tool that helps bring online social behaviour back into the real world.”

KEEN has received considerable traction after launching at Otago University early in 2014 and is poised for expanding into eight new universities across New Zealand and Australia in June. Going forward, KEEN’s looking to the United Kingdom as the next market, where it is already in talks with universities.

A participant in digital startup accelerator program Lightning Lab, KEEN has spent the past three months refining its business plan for international expansion, building its team and improving the product based on market feedback.

“Our daily active user ratio is very encouraging, and traffic is only going up” says Chen. “We can’t wait to see what students overseas do with it.”

http://keen.to


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