Teddy Solomon simply moved to a brand new home in Palo Alto, so he turned to the Stanford neighborhood on Fizz to furnish his room.
“Each time I present as much as purchase one thing from any individual, I grill them concerning the market, as a result of I’m actually inquisitive about their expertise,” Solomon, a co-founder of Fizz, instructed TechCrunch. He’s notably psyched concerning the $100 TV he received from a grad scholar who was about to maneuver out for the summer season.
“Did you inform him who you have been?” requested Rakesh Mathur, the longtime entrepreneur and investor that Solomon introduced in to be CEO of Fizz.
“Yeah, as a result of I requested him like, 100 questions concerning the market,” Solomon deadpanned.
When TechCrunch first met Fizz’s Stanford dropout co-founders in 2022, the nameless social media platform – which has separate communities for particular person faculty campuses – was solely at a few dozen faculties. Now, the app is working on 240 school campuses and 60 excessive faculties, and the group has expanded to 30 full-time employees and 4,000 volunteer moderators throughout faculties. Fizz has raised $41.5 million throughout a number of funding rounds, powering the app’s rising presence in campus tradition.
Even in these earliest conversations, Solomon talked about Fizz’s plans to open a market, the place college students should buy and promote issues like garments, textbooks, bikes and extra. School college students are sometimes making these sorts of transactions since they’re shifting between dorms yearly, and perhaps they need some a refund for his or her frivolously used calculus textbook.
Solomon thinks that the marketplace for a neighborhood, Gen Z-focused shopping for and promoting platform is extensive open.
“There’s that type of stigma round, like, if I promote one thing on Craigslist, I’d get kidnapped,” Solomon stated. “And Fb market… Gen Z just isn’t utilizing Fb.”
His hunch appears to be correct. {The marketplace} characteristic rolled out throughout Fizz’s a whole bunch of campuses between March and Could of this yr, in preparation for the predictable end-of-semester rush to promote. Solomon stated Fizz has had 50,000 listings posted on the platform, with 150,000 DMs despatched round objects. The most well-liked class is ladies’s clothes, which quantities to about 75% of listings.
However Fb market gained’t be a simple competitor to beat. Some younger Fb customers say they solely go on the platform for {the marketplace}. Despite the fact that fewer Gen Z customers are on Fb, Meta is engaged on recapturing that technology’s consideration.
Funds are usually not but built-in in Fizz, so customers are answerable for navigating their gross sales. Solomon stated Fizz might construct out a fee construction to make {the marketplace} extra user-friendly, however he isn’t serious about monetization but. Whereas Fizz could also be wealthy in enterprise funding, this basic Silicon Valley transfer of prioritizing progress over revenue isn’t as possible within the subsequent technology of social media.
Fizz is absolutely nameless, even on {the marketplace}. However to get onto a college’s Fizz neighborhood within the first place, it’s worthwhile to confirm a college e-mail account. So, whereas there’s all the time a threat in assembly up with a stranger – even when they go to your faculty – customers appear much less hesitant about shopping for from their classmates.
“One of many statistics we actually love that we have been trying over the opposite day is that on common, each vendor has two individuals attain out to them earlier than they promote,” Solomon stated. “If you recognize they’re within the dorm subsequent door to you, you don’t have any motive to determine in the event that they’re reputable or not. It’s fairly straightforward.”
However as with the nameless social platforms which have come earlier than it, Fizz has struggled to keep up a secure surroundings on all of its campuses. In a single high-profile case, a Fizz neighborhood wreaked havoc on a highschool, as college students hid behind anonymity to disgrace and torment different college students and college.
“We’ve had two communities that we’ve voluntarily shut down simply due to suggestions from dad and mom and directors,” Solomon stated. Since then, Fizz has refocused its dedication on content material moderation. Up to now, Fizz paid part-time scholar moderators to watch their communities. Now, the corporate has devoted employees that work on belief and security, and it’s utilizing know-how from OpenAI to make its automated moderation extra sturdy.
These efforts is probably not sufficient to mitigate issues, although. On nameless apps, faculty directors have seen horrible eventualities play out earlier than – keep in mind YikYak? The president of the College of North Carolina, which has sixteen campuses, introduced plans to ban nameless apps like Fizz, Whisper and Sidechat from the varsity. So, these college students gained’t have the ability to purchase pre-owned textbooks on Fizz’s market.
“We’re very conscious that as an nameless, Gen Z platform, moderation must be our core,” Mathur instructed TechCrunch.
TechCrunch accessed one college’s Fizz neighborhood. College students posted about intercourse and medicines – these matters are allowed on Fizz – however weren’t bullying one another or sparking dangerous dialogue. However this is only one neighborhood out of a whole bunch. Whereas Fizz’s momentum in rising its content material moderation group is promising, even the most important, most resourced social platforms nonetheless wrestle with toxicity.
Fizz’s argument in favor of the nameless nature of the platform is that it encourages college students to open up about how they’re actually feeling – when a scholar sees posts about how different individuals is perhaps stressing over an examination or struggling socially, they’ll know they aren’t alone in these experiences. On the brighter aspect, customers would possibly discover some nice campus-specific memes. Or, now that there’s a market, they could have the ability to rating an amazing deal on a TV.
