Rutgers alumni launch new social media platform focusing on personal experiences

A new social media platform made by Rutgers alumni is available: Storib, a means of sharing and exploring stories about real experiences.

Targeted primarily toward young adults, Storib displays people’s stories on its homepage in place of image posts characteristic of Instagram and Facebook to encourage authenticity, rather than concerns about maintaining a certain image, said founder Jay Mendapara.

“We wanted to create something for sharing experiences not only so you can document your own life, but also so you can get inspired by other people’s stories,” he said. “It’s a fun and friendly environment for you to share your true experiences.”

The platform does away with follower counts, instead enabling users to filter stories by topic, location and other characteristics, Mendapara said.

“Let's say you wanted to go to Yosemite National Park,” he said. “You can search up 'Yosemite,' and it’ll show you a bunch of stories that people have linked to the park. Or if you want more stories about cooking or anything of that nature, you can search it up and it will show you a list of things that are related to that topic.”

Another way to filter stories is to join groups around specific passions and view stories written by members in a group, a feature designed to enable community sharing, Mendapara said.

He said Storib arose from his desire to start a larger project after graduating from Rutgers and to present a solution to the concerns people have about social media.

“There's a lot of talk about social media being toxic and everyone focusing too much on what they look like and thinking too hard about what they post,” he said. “So, we can resolve that issue. We want to create something where people can post without thinking on real stories about their lives rather than pushing a different image through social media.”

While Storib currently operates from a single website, Mendapara said he and his team are developing a mobile application for the platform. He said they are looking for additional people with skills in marketing or graphic design to join the team.

“One thing I would want people to know is it took a lot of time to make, and there was a lot of thought process behind it,” Mendapara said. “And … the main thing I would want people to know is that it’s really for being yourself on the app and showing people your true hobbies and your true activities and emotions.”