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Community Corner

New mobile start-up launching app for BC students and area businesses

Boston-based mobile start-up Student Nation, Inc. set to launch free social app for college students. The app will bring college students together through real-time engagement and entertainment, while offering discounts and incentives from local businesses and national companies. 

Student Nation, Inc. is a new mobile venture aimed at helping Boston area college students get the most out of their communities. Whether you're an incoming freshman looking for the best food, music, arts, etc. around your campus or in town, or you're a seasoned senior that loves discounts at your favorite hangout, our app will accommodate you. And these same students provide a huge consumer base within the community which all local businesses strive to cater to. We aim to merge these two worlds with an app that offers great entertainment, socializing, and savings for students while bringing new and repeat customers to local businesses and national companies. 

Student Nation will initially launch at Boston College in January 2014. "We want to keep it exclusive at first until we're ready to grow, then we'll expand to other schools one by one," says Ari Kalos, a founding partner and CTO of the company. "It's similar to how Facebook started, exclusively at one college and then it grew school by school. But unlike Facebook, which opened up to everyone and is now losing its 'cool' factor with younger viewers, we're sticking only with students, so we'll always be cool," he says with a smile. 

The app's user features include:

•A free app for college students filled with entertainment, social engagement, and deals, discounts, and incentives at local businesses and national brands. 
• A music player with all the latest music at their fingertips, with all the major genres and most popular hits of the day. 
• Music videos and funny, viral videos, as well as each colleges videos feeding directly into the app. 
• Photo galleries using Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook hashtags and feeds to deliver a dynamic photo experience. 
• Event listings with real-time directions, imagery, check-ins, RSVP, ticket purchasing, as well as the ability to see which of your friends are going. 
• Live radio feeds from college radio stations across the country. 
• A virtual wall where people can post to the entire community and see others in proximity to their location. 
• News feeds pulling RSS feeds, Twitter handles, and Google keywords to create a dynamic news section. 
• A resource section full of helpful tips, info, numbers, and commuting maps for Boston. 
• Top users rating system with prizes. 
• Social login via your favorite social media profile. 
• And many more features currently in development. 

Student Nation's business features include:

• Custom local business profiles complete with photos, interactive maps, check-ins, mobile reservations, and full mobile technology capabilities 
• Real-time data for local businesses on the effectiveness of their Student Nation presence 
• Social media expansion help for local businesses 
• Email marketing 
• Push notifications 
• Geo-fencing options (notifications that pop up on a users phone when they get close to a business) 
• E-commerce abilities 

Our goal is to create a win-win situation for both users and businesses, and the response so far has been more than incredible. As a company, we look forward to creating a strong Boston-based business offering an amazing product while creating jobs for students (as we grow from school to school, we will hire students from each campus for various roles). 

About Student Nation, Inc.

Student Nation, Inc. was founded in 2013 and is the second tech venture of partners Ari Kalos, Frank Stamos, and Drake Behrakis. Their previous collaboration was a web/media company founded in 1998 which was funded in 2010 and sold in 2013. 

For additional info, please call Frank Stamos at 617-299-9475 or frank@studentnation.me

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