MYLO is about creating groups to collaborate and communicate privately and efficiently. It’s holistic, encompassing all the groups in your life, both personal and professional, and it allows you to manage and interact with them in a single place. MYLO facilitates group chat, photo sharing, event management, and list building, for each of your groups at your fingertips.
Privacy is the cornerstone of MYLO, allowing users a place to be authentic and exclusive again- without offering details to a public platform that are more appropriately shared with smaller, specific groups of people. Effective use of MYLO allows you to think more critically about what you post in public that may cause regret, judgment, or spark unnecessary drama later. MYLO is private by design, with content and members unable to be found by a search engine.
Where we learned the most…
Our team spent a significant portion of the past year on college campuses, working with college students across the country, and attending two of the largest collegiate Greek conferences- AFLV (Association of Fraternal Leadership & Values) and SEPC (Southeastern Panhellenic Conference). We did this in order to work directly with students and discover what their largest concerns and desires were with regard to apps that would make their lives easier. We also had the privilege of working with a marketing class for a semester that used our app as a class project. Divided into 7 teams, they presented each team’s findings and recommended marketing campaign ideas. The class’s findings aligned with ours, and a few key themes quickly surfaced:
Privacy is the top concern of college students when it comes to interaction online. They’ve witnessed others (or were victims themselves) being cyber bullied and have been warned most of their lives to be careful about what they post lest they tweet or post their way out of a scholarship or job. They hate drama, and realize value in keeping most of their lives private.
College students use a combination of apps to coordinate everything they do in groups- class group projects for multiple classes, campus organizations, clubs, sororities, fraternities, friend groups, family, and teams- leaving them feeling somewhat unorganized and overwhelmed. When using multiple apps for different groups to manage scheduling, conversations, posting photos that should only be shared within a group, and even task lists, it often complicates the effort versus promoting a sense of solidarity and confidence in their groups.
Authenticity is critically important to this demographic but increasingly difficult with most forms of social media. They want to express themselves creatively and authentically, but doing so in a public social media application often invites judgment and/or drama instead of genuine connection.
So what does MYLO do?
MYLO is a clever iOS app (coming very soon also to the Google Play store) that allows you to create and manage groups for everyone and every event in your life, privately and on your terms.
Upon downloading, you are prompted to create a group, name it, then add members to that group. You can either invite someone from your phone contacts, type in part of their name if they are already a user, or invite them via email.
You can create as many groups as you’d like. Once you have a group created, you can collaborate via Events, Photos, Group Chat or Lists. Each of these features are clearly listed with push notifications and alerts for new activity, so you can respond accordingly.
· Events. Add events to your group either from your phone or by tapping where indicated. You are also prompted that you may add lists or photo albums to any event. MYLO events are designed to alert all group members if anything changes. Tennis practice canceled? Coach can make the change in events and everyone gets a notification.
· Photos. Create an unlimited number of photo albums for each group. Share photos with members of the group (knowing members in your other groups are unable to see what is not specifically shared with them). Tag photos and even tag other group members in comments about the photos. Imagine wedding dress shopping with bridesmaids, mixers between sororities and fraternities, family vacations, all of the photos you want to have and share with SELECT groups of people easily- but without alerting millions of people that you are out of town, had too much to drink the night before or that they aren’t invited to your wedding.
· Group Chat. Chat real time in groups. Not only will MYLO leave your text application alone, but you can also pin an important announcement to the home page of the group so it doesn’t get lost in the feed. Notifications will alert you as new messages appear.
· Lists. Build task lists, birthday lists, stuff I love lists, what I want when I’m rich lists, complete gift registries, or even an epic list like one of our co-founders has: “Extreme Skiing, Trophies & Cool Guns.” You can add any item to a MYLO list from outside the app by tapping the share icon- just like you would share something to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Lists allow a whole new level of collaboration, because you can “claim” items, “assign” them to group members, mark them complete and even tag group members in comments about items. Imagine organizing a group project with MYLO and using Lists to track tasks and respective owners as well as resources or articles needed for a project. Also, imagine having your entire wedding registry in one place at your fingertips…Lists are a favorite feature for MYLO users.
Want to find a group to join?
Sorry. That’s not why MYLO exists. You won’t be able to find a group (or it’s members or contents) without being specifically invited to join. In MYLO, groups have a genuine purpose and don’t attract strangers. You must either set up a group or be invited to join one. Moreover, you can’t be automatically added to someone’s group without accepting an invitation first. Go ahead and breathe that sigh of relief- you don’t have to be the bad guy and leave a group you didn’t want into in the first place. But, you can always leave a MYLO group if you’d like. And, many groups are just temporary, dissolving at the end of a project or event.
The value behind MYLO is that it allows you to authentically connect with people in a group. Really connect, and share and collaborate efficiently and in an organized manner. Whether you are planning a wedding, a youth group mission trip, or simply want to stay connected with family, friends, your pledge class, or a group of people you share a common interest with. As one of my co-founders put it,
“MYLO is designed to promote and facilitate authentic connections for every kind of group in your life.”
