Students at Grand Valley State University now have access to Unseen; a completely anonymous college social networking app.

Unseen’s co-founder and CEO, Michael Schramm, said that the app was created so that students could share content without fear of fallout or judgment.

“College students are looking for authentic ways to discover and connect with other students around different opinions, questions, moments and experiences that they otherwise wouldn’t put out there,” Schramm said.

The app was launched in May 2014 at Texas A&M University and is currently available on almost 150 college campuses. The app is available at Central Michigan University, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan.

“We solely take schools based on how many students generally want this on their campus,” Schramm said. “It is really about the community more than anything else.”

Schramm said that Unseen came to GVSU because of interest from the students, and that the app has already been downloaded by many students.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with the school and what is happening,” Schramm said.

Munjal Budhabhatti, the co-founder & CTO of Unseen, and Schramm did not originally start building Unseen as an anonymous app. It was designed to be a platform and social tool for students to connect in genuine ways.

However, Schramm said that the thing that inhibits students from making connections and sharing is the identity aspect.

“There is this other part of campus that goes unseen: sexual preferences, opinions, biases and a lot of content that there are judgments around,” Schramm said.

Schramm described the app as a way to share the unseen things that happen behind closed doors, eliciting honest, pure feedback from peers. He said that students do not need to fear discovery through the app.

“The vast majority of content shared is highly controversial,” Schramm said. “There are a lot of opinions on Unseen. It is intended to be a tool for debate, bringing together unseen moments, experiences and opinions.”

Unseen may fall into the same category of social networking apps as Snapchat and Yik Yak, however, Schramm said that there are a couple major differences.

“The problem with Snapchat is it is missing that discovery piece,” Schramm said. “Unseen allows you to have the same level of engagement but with people that you don’t know. I can’t think of any other applications that do what Unseen does.”

Schramm said that a lot of people compare the app to Yik Yak, but said that this is not a fair comparison.

“Yik Yak focuses on real time news based in your location,” Schramm said. “Unseen is about interactions and connecting people. Yes, there is that news component. But our end results are different.”

Schramm also said that despite the fact that there are a lot of anonymous apps out there, very few of them are truly anonymous.

“We are the only app that doesn’t collect any identifiable information,” Schramm said.

Everything on Unseen is encrypted and there is a secure, private message piece to the app. Schramm said that users are the only ones who can ever view their content and they can only do so once. Once content is viewed, it self-destructs.

Schramm said that Unseen is open and responsive to feedback. The app is available on Android Google Play and on the iPhone app store.

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