UniBuzz
A private social network for university life — connecting students, clubs, events, campus news, housing, and the student marketplace in one place.
What UniBuzz is
UniBuzz is a social network for verified university students. Students connect with each other and with their campus: they post photos, videos and reels, talk anonymously in Buzz, follow each other, and message friends, groups and their classes. Each university is its own private community, where students mainly see their own campus's people, clubs, events, discussions and news.
It launches first at Texas State University (TXST), with plans to expand to campuses worldwide.
Mission: connect students, clubs, organizations and campus communities in one place, so university life is more social, more connected and more convenient.
Facebook began as a network for college students and then became a network for everyone. UniBuzz brings back that university-only feel. It isn't a general social network, and it isn't an apartment or marketplace app. It's the digital home of campus life.
The core: the social network
This is the product. New work, navigation and wording should start here.
| Feature | What students get |
|---|
| Orbit | The personalized home feed (the For you feed): photos, videos, posts and reels from their campus. |
| Buzz | Anonymous campus talk in separate Campus and Global feeds, with polls, per-thread aliases, votes and replies, moderated by Trust & Safety. |
| Reels | TikTok-style short videos, full screen. |
| Profiles and following | University-verified identities with major, graduation year, bio and classes, followers, and privacy controls. |
| Messages | Private chats, group chats and automatic class group chats, with voice messages, replies and view-once Snaps. |
| Search | Find students to follow first, plus the listings on Explore. |
Coming next, and part of the core:
- Clubs and organizations: pages to follow and join.
- Campus events: activities, club meetings, career fairs and hackathons.
- Campus news: university and student news.
- Calls: audio and video calls in any chat. They are built and paused behind a "Coming soon" label.
Supporting features: tools for campus life
These help with everyday student life and keep students in their community. They live together on the Explore tab and support the social network rather than define it.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|
| Housing | Apartments and subleases near campus, including listings from local apartment communities. |
| Roommates | Posts from students who have a room to share or are looking for one. |
| Marketplace | Buy, sell, trade or give away furniture, electronics, textbooks, bikes and more. |
Three connected platforms
- UniBuzz: the social network for students, as an app for iOS and Android and a website.
- UniBuzz Business: a portal at
/business for local businesses, from apartment communities to restaurants, cafés, shops, startups and services. They post updates, products, deals and events and housing listings, run Sponsored ads in For You, Reels and Housing after the UniBuzz team's review, answer student inquiries (students always write first), read analytics and run a team with roles (Business v2, migrations 49 and 50).
- CampConnect Admin: managing users, businesses, content and platform security. It covers the staff console at
/admin on the website (see Buzz (anonymous)) and the separate CampConnect Admin staff app (see Admin app (CampConnect Admin)).
Business model and design
The student platform is free. Revenue comes from businesses: advertising, promoted posts, paid listings and partnerships. Sponsored content is always labeled.
The design is modern, minimal and Apple-inspired, combining the best of Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Discord.
Product direction for developers and AI assistants
- Social first. Lead with people, posts, Orbit, Buzz, Reels and messages. Housing, roommates and the marketplace are supporting tools, so don't let them set the app's identity, navigation or wording outside Explore.
- Campus first. Every feature belongs to a university community, and only verified students join, with a university email.
- Businesses stay off the social side. They can answer students who contact them but never start a conversation. "Sponsored" appears only on paid promotions, and "Verified Partner" only on businesses that have been checked.
- Legacy names. The product was called CampConnect until 2026-10-26 and is now UniBuzz; the separate staff app keeps the name CampConnect Admin. The project began as an apartment finder called "Apartment Book". That name survives only in identifiers: the package names (
@apartment-book/shared), the app's slug, URL scheme and bundle ID (apartmentbook), the Vercel project and old migration comments. They're history, not direction. Don't rename them, because that would break builds, deep links and the database history.
Long-term vision
Become the main digital community for university students worldwide: one place to meet people, join clubs, find events and opportunities, follow campus news, and handle everyday student life, from housing to buying and selling.
Technology
Built with Next.js 16 + TypeScript + Tailwind for the website and Expo (React Native) for the iOS and Android app, on top of Supabase (Postgres, auth, realtime chat, image storage). The backend is a hosted service that the apps talk to directly, and all data-access code lives in a shared package, so the website and the app share everything except their screens.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
