Lunch at the new restaurant around the corner, violin lessons for Lucy on Wed, Twitter posts and emails to read, project deadlines tomorrow, financial workshop on Friday, sneak in a few minutes of the baseball playoffs… Trying to put together all the pieces of our hectic days can easily make a person feel disjointed. The Join app for iPhone intends to connect us to everything important in our lives in a more meaningful way.
Connect To Every Corner Of Your World
At heart, Join is a social networking app designed for inclusion. The Join app organizes the people, events, and conversations that matter most to each individual in one place. That alone makes the app incredibly handy. Though flexibility might be its greatest asset. The platform is wide open, allowing users great freedom to decide with whom and with what they decide to join.
Users can join groups based on shared interests or activities not bound by our ordinary network of friends (though you can sign in with a Facebook account or email address and bring the usual suspects on board as well). Join a dart league or a book club. Join nearby campers for a hike. Join a conversation about the latest car models to help you decide which vehicle you should buy. The thrust of the startup is to join everything.
Want to join a tail-gate party before the big game? This could be the way.
Join And See What Happens
Not only can you join groups that allow you to indulge your passions, but the app helps us make the most of our routine experiences. For example, the Join app would be a great tool for parents to coordinate with each other when putting together school events or orchestrating extracurricular activities. They might share everything from schedules to lists of who’s bringing what, and also send each other updates quickly.
The Join app occupies that sweet spot where startups often find the most success. It’s useful, simple, and adaptable. An accommodating framework that allows users to define the Join experience gives Join tremendous potential.
John Albano was sitting in a cold movie theater and wanted to tell the manager. His discomfort sparked him to brainstorm with co-founder Ryan Maturski on ways that might enhance or alter everyday experiences. (We can only hope that Albano didn’t text throughout the film, though KillerStartups readers might be sympathetic to startup inspiration arriving at the most awkward times.) It wasn’t long before their collaborative partnership molded and coded their ideas into the bootstrapped venture Join.
There’s good reason to believe that Maturski and Albano will remain highly-active on Join, since they apparently have the startup and joining bugs. They previously co-created Plateside, a social networking app they sold last year that allows users to communicate through license plate numbers. Before they began building apps in tandem, Albano worked at Macromedia and Adobe. Maturski’s earlier founding efforts included assembling RacingJunk.com (also sold). This classified site he grew into a 625,000 member community of racing and automotive enthusiasts.
If you enjoy Join, you may also want to check out these 3 iPhone apps that Maturski and Albano have put together:
- MushMash – play a sliding puzzle game
- Playing Time – track players’ time on the field (great for parents and coaches)
- Seven Lunches – find daily, local lunch specials
Find the Join app here.
