What are we doing this weekend?
That’s the question What’s The Word co-founders Alpha Barry (CAS ’26), Gardner Heitzmann (MSB ’27), and Joshua Jordan (MSB ’28) set out to answer when creating their new app, which launched on March 24.
What’s the Word is an events app that allows hosts to publish public, friends-only, or invite-only functions. Currently, the app only lists Georgetown events, though the cofounders hope to expand their reach in the future.
The app, which has about 800 users, aims to solve the problems that the co-founders and their friends have had with other social media or event platforms. The group found that most existing apps fall into two general categories: apps that organize in-person events, like Partiful, and apps that create an online community, like Snapchat and Instagram. The team wanted to create a platform that combines these goals.
“We found that there was this nice little space for a network that is able to bring people together in real life, but also bring in your communities and help expand your social circles,” Barry said.
What’s The Word’s features reflect this community-building aim. Users looking for new events can scroll through the app’s main page to see the top events of the week that are available to the public or their friend network. Attendees can see what their friends are up to, explore the profiles of other attendees, and post pictures from the events.
“Attending an event is very easy, it’s one click. Creating an event, regardless of the size and the target audience, takes about three to four seconds,” Barry said. “Our goal is to be as fast as possible, so that you could really focus on the things and the other aspects that matter the most to you.”
Being on a college campus, it can be hard to keep up with all that is happening every weekend, Barry and Heitzmann said. They hope that by putting all these events in one place, it will help students be able to quickly see what is going on and decide where they want to go.
“There’s so many options, which is a good thing. But the issue of so many options is people go all over the place, and then you end up losing touch with your friends and the people that you really want to spend time with the most,” Barry said.
The app aims to create easier communication between people and their friends.
“It basically just solves the problem of having to text all your friends, wait for their text back, hopefully try to figure out what you want to do. It just expedites the whole process,” Heitzmann added.
Barry and Heitzman are also both football players, which influences their perspective on campus social life. Student-athletes tend not to have a lot of free time and the pair expressed that they don’t want to spend more time than necessary trying to decide what events to attend. However, Heitzmann emphasized that even though athletes have a “bubble” of community, deciding which parties to attend isn’t always a coordinated team sport.
“The cool thing about being a part of a team, especially a team as big as the football team, is we have a bunch of different personalities and a bunch of different people that do a bunch of different stuff,” Barry said. “This isn’t just our problem. This is a problem that a lot of people are facing.”
Barry and Heitzmann, who both came to Georgetown with other students from their high schools, wanted to find a way to connect different groups of people they know through their app. The co-founders hope that profiles could be a tool to encourage students to engage with new people and groups, too.
“We’re trying to build up profiles,” Heitzmann said. “So you get a quick snapshot almost of the people that might be relevant for you to go out and meet in person.”
Sick of pestering your friends to send you pictures from the night before? What’s The Word gives users the opportunity to upload photos and other media from events for others to see. The co-founders hope this feature will give users a way to connect after the party is over.
Heitzmann described What’s The Word’s advertising strategy as “aggressive.” Advertising has included hanging a banner in front of their townhouse, distributing fliers in dorm buildings, making their friends campus ambassadors, trading donuts for downloads, and doing collaborative events with other apps, including Cerca, a new dating app founded by Georgetown students.
“We’re very social people. We like talking to a bunch of different people, let’s use that to our advantage,” Barry said. “So we used that to get word of mouth. That’s the best way to launch anything on a campus, it’s not a TV advertisement, it’s your friends telling you, ‘Hey, you should really use it, this is a really good app.’”
Although the app currently only lists Georgetown events, the co-founders hope to expand in the near future by inviting other local universities, including Howard University, American University, and George Washington University, to join.
“While we don’t have those schools yet, we realize that a bunch of Georgetown students interact with those campuses,” Barry said. “We think it makes sense to provide those communities their own space, but also create another space where all the schools could interact with each other.”
The team behind What’s The Word uses Instagram to engage with the community and help promote events among students who may not have joined the app yet.
“This is a product built for you guys. And so we want your feedback, so we can cater to however best suits our users,” Heitzmann said. “It’s more just a platform for us to help people get their events out to the full Georgetown community.”
