Teddy Solomon simply moved to a brand new home in Palo Alto, so he turned to the Stanford neighborhood on Fizz to furnish his room.
“Each time I present as much as purchase one thing from any individual, I grill them concerning the market, as a result of I’m actually interested by their expertise,” Solomon, a co-founder of Fizz, advised TechCrunch. He’s significantly psyched concerning the $100 TV he received from a grad pupil who was about to maneuver out for the summer season.
“Did you inform him who you had been?” requested Rakesh Mathur, the longtime entrepreneur and investor that Solomon introduced in to be CEO of Fizz.
“Yeah, as a result of I requested him like, 100 questions concerning the market,” Solomon deadpanned.
When TechCrunch first met Fizz’s Stanford dropout co-founders in 2022, the nameless social media platform — which has separate communities for particular person faculty campuses — was solely at a few dozen faculties. Now, the app is working on 240 school campuses and 60 excessive faculties, and the group has expanded to 30 full-time employees and 4,000 volunteer moderators throughout faculties. Fizz has raised $41.5 million throughout a number of funding rounds, powering the app’s rising presence in campus tradition.
Even in these earliest conversations, Solomon talked about Fizz’s plans to open a market, the place college students should purchase and promote issues like garments, textbooks, bikes and extra. School college students are sometimes making these sorts of transactions since they’re shifting between dorms yearly, and possibly they need some a refund for his or her frivolously used calculus textbook.
Solomon thinks that the marketplace for an area, Gen Z-focused shopping for and promoting platform is broad open.
“There’s that form of stigma round, like, if I promote one thing on Craigslist, I would get kidnapped,” Solomon mentioned. “And Fb market… Gen Z isn’t utilizing Fb.”
His hunch appears to be correct. {The marketplace} characteristic rolled out throughout Fizz’s a whole bunch of campuses between March and Could of this yr, in preparation for the predictable end-of-semester rush to promote. Solomon mentioned Fizz has had 50,000 listings posted on the platform, with 150,000 DMs despatched round objects. The preferred class is clothes, which quantities to about 25% of listings.
However Fb market received’t be a straightforward competitor to beat. Some younger Fb customers say they solely go on the platform for {the marketplace}. Although fewer Gen Z customers are on Fb, Meta is engaged on recapturing that era’s consideration.
Funds are usually not but built-in in Fizz, so customers are liable for navigating their gross sales. Solomon mentioned Fizz could construct out a fee construction to make {the marketplace} extra user-friendly, however he isn’t fascinated by monetization but. Whereas Fizz could also be wealthy in enterprise funding, this basic Silicon Valley transfer of prioritizing development over revenue isn’t as possible within the subsequent era of social media.
Fizz is absolutely nameless, even on {the marketplace}. However to get onto a faculty’s Fizz neighborhood within the first place, that you must confirm a faculty e mail account. So, whereas there’s all the time a danger in assembly up with a stranger — even when they go to your faculty — customers appear much less hesitant about shopping for from their classmates.
“One of many statistics we actually love that we had been trying over the opposite day is that on common, each vendor has two folks attain out to them earlier than they promote,” Solomon mentioned. “If you recognize they’re within the dorm subsequent door to you, you don’t have any purpose to determine in the event that they’re official or not. It’s fairly straightforward.”
However as with the nameless social platforms which have come earlier than it, Fizz has struggled to keep up a secure atmosphere on all of its campuses. In a single high-profile case, a Fizz neighborhood wreaked havoc on a highschool, as college students hid behind anonymity to disgrace and torment different college students and college.
“We’ve had two communities that we’ve voluntarily shut down simply due to suggestions from mother and father and directors,” Solomon mentioned. Since then, Fizz has refocused its dedication on content material moderation. Up to now, Fizz paid part-time pupil moderators to watch their communities. Now, the corporate has devoted employees that work on belief and security, and it’s utilizing expertise from OpenAI to make its automated moderation extra sturdy.
These efforts is probably not sufficient to mitigate considerations, although. On nameless apps, faculty directors have seen horrible situations play out earlier than — keep in mind YikYak? The president of the College of North Carolina, which has 16 campuses, introduced plans to ban nameless apps like Fizz, Whisper and Sidechat from the varsity. So, these college students received’t be capable to purchase pre-owned textbooks on Fizz’s market.
“We’re very conscious that as an nameless, Gen Z platform, moderation must be our core,” Mathur advised TechCrunch.
TechCrunch accessed one college’s Fizz neighborhood. College students posted about intercourse and medicines — these subjects are allowed on Fizz — however weren’t bullying one another or sparking dangerous dialogue. However this is only one neighborhood out of a whole bunch. Whereas Fizz’s momentum in rising its content material moderation group is promising, even the most important, most resourced social platforms nonetheless battle with toxicity.
Fizz’s argument in favor of the nameless nature of the platform is that it encourages college students to open up about how they’re actually feeling — when a pupil sees posts about how different folks may be stressing over an examination or struggling socially, they’ll know they aren’t alone in these experiences. On the brighter aspect, customers would possibly discover some nice campus-specific memes. Or, now that there’s a market, they could be capable to rating an ideal deal on a TV.
Up to date, 7/3/24, 4:17 PM ET: Clothes makes up 25% of Fizz listings.
