App connects students to Greek events

It’s Friday night, and you find yourself wondering if there’s anything happening on The Row. Rather than shoot some texts and ask around, just open GreekLink — the new app that organizes all social events in the Greek community.

GreekLink was founded by USC sophomore Noah Johnson and his childhood friend, Ari Gootnick, who attends the University of Texas, Austin.

“The app allows sororities and fraternities to post public events just to USC, just to the Greek community or just to their own organization,” Johnson said. “Whether that be a philanthropy event that all of USC can attend or a party that’s just for Greek members, you decide who you want to see each event.”

Anyone can download the iPhone application for free and create a profile, but it serves as a tool not only for the public but also for chapters to contact their members more efficiently.

“A fraternity can send a chapter meeting, which would only go to that private organization … and that’ll get sent as a push notification to everyone on their phone, instead of traditional email, which right now most sororities and fraternities are using,” Johnson said. “You have to check your email, it’s a little less organized, and they’re sometimes not as efficient. [GreekLink] sends a notification, kind of like a text message, to everyone’s phone and gets the point across a little easier.”

The business-minded pair began working on the app early last summer, when both Johnson and Gootnick noticed a lack of communication hindering both of their respective campuses.

“I didn’t know what was going on in other sororities and fraternities, and they kind of felt that there at UT,” Johnson, who is a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, said. “Ari basically came back and brought up this idea, and I noticed this lack of communication in my fraternity and Greek life as a whole, and we kind of just moved from there.”

The process of creating an app is a long one: It took about seven or eight months for Johnson and Gootnick, from coming up with the concept to outsourcing the project to be engineered.

“Ari and I are really into the business side and came up with the initial idea,” Johnson said. “We made the initial design, and then we had a team of people in the Ukraine actually code the app for us. That was a pretty long process and there were definitely some cultural boundaries that made it a little more difficult, but we pretty much mapped out the essential design of what we wanted the app to look like and what features we wanted, and then gave that to developers in the Ukraine.”

Despite only launching in mid-January, Johnson said the app already has more than 2,000 USC student users, and almost every Greek fraternity or sorority is registered on GreekLink, a feat that he attributes to his own social network.

“I went through my friends and got reps in each fraternity and sorority,” Johnson said. “From there, I sent out emails and talked to chapter meetings about the app. I set up a table and had fliers and bottle openers that I passed out to people right on University Avenue, to kind of just spread the word. A lot of it was just word of mouth.”

From what he’s been hearing, Johnson said reception of the app has been positive, primarily because there’s nothing else like it on the market.

“There was really no other way to figure out what was going on in another house,” Johnson said. “Now, people are like, ‘Oh, I had no idea that this fraternity or this sorority was having an invite or a party on that day.’ People are really excited about it. But we’re definitely open to feedback. People are coming up to us with cool features that they want to add and things they would like to see.”

Even though Greek life is known for playing a more significant role here at USC than at the average university, Johnson said he anticipates the app to be as much of a success at other campuses as it is here.

“The heavy influence of Greek life has a great impact has helped our app catch on a little bit quicker, and UT seems to be growing at the exact same rate and they obviously have a really big Greek influence, as well,” Johnson said. “But I think any school could utilize it — it creates a little more organization in the Greek system.”

Johnson, a Marshall student, and Gootnick, an advertising major, have roots in the business world from a as far back as when they were teenagers.

“I’ve always been really interested in entrepreneurship and the startup culture, and me and Ari actually had a DJ business in high school, so that’s how we know each other — we grew up together,” Johnson said.

From the DJ business to this seemingly ever-growing app, Johnson said their ultimate goal is to expand GreekLink across the country.

“Hopefully it goes to every Greek system in the U.S. — that’s our dream,” Johnson said. “We’re getting a lot of interest already from colleges outside of UT and USC. We’re hoping to expand pretty quickly — if not this semester — and probably 20 plus schools by next fall.”