A new website is on the rise at Alabama State University called VibeU. VibeU is a web-based online chat service that allows college students to video call each other.  Seniors David Oyekeye and Obaloluwa Olaniran, who both happen to be computer science majors, created the website as a safer alternative to Omegle which they believe to be too unsupervised.

“I looked at it and thought, what if we had something that could potentially connect people on campus? Because there’s a lot of social anxiety among college students and people are more confident behind their computer screens,” Oyekeye said.

Oyekeye and Olaniran have been friends since their freshman year.  Having lived in the same apartment, it did not take long before they decided to collaborate. They both had worked on multiple projects before coming up with the idea to create a web chat service for students.

For a student to get involved with VibeU, he or she would just need to type VibeU.io in any available web browser. After reaching the site, the student can use his or her university email to log in. The site is accessible on mobile devices but both Oyekeye and Olaniran suggest using a laptop or a desktop for full efficiency.

“We have a future plan to create an ios app, but for now, we just want to keep it a web app so you can use it on your phone but it’s advisable to use a laptop or a Macbook,” Olaniran said.

Alabama State University and Miles College are the only college and university using VibeU.  The website has an option for a student who does not see his or her school as an option, they can add it, but due to numerous requests from students at Miles College, the two decided to just add it.

Oyekeye and Olaniran have plans to expand VibeU to other colleges in the future. Despite the plans to expand VibeU to other colleges, there are no plans to sell it to any large companies.

“We’re planning to actually keep it because we believe in this actually having a strong impact among college students,” Olaniran said. “So we just want to make sure that it works in ASU then we can add more colleges.”

The app has many features meant to help people meet and keep new friends. Once a person reaches the website, below the video screen has buttons with various functions. The first button, stylized as a play button, starts the video call and also connects them with another student who is using the site. The second, stylized as two play buttons has the ability to skip to the next person if two people that are talking are not really connecting. The third button, stylized as a square, stops the video call. If two people want to talk but cannot use their audio or do not want to, they can message each other by accessing the fourth button; stylized as a text bubble. If two people chatting both decide to like each other, they can add each other as friends and talk as often as they want.

For any students who might have safety concerns regarding the use if VibeU, there are many security guidelines that have been established.

“We have a report button where you can report someone,” Olaniran said. “You can even block someone if they actually violate your personal privacy, and we have a security measure that takes care of that in the background, so if there’s any problem they can report it on the app.”

Both Oyekeye and Olaniran hope that the success they build with VibeU will inspire computer science majors coming after them.

“I really feel like it might motivate them to just change their game and try to make an impact,” Olaniran said. “It also shows the underclassmen that someone can do this from an HBCU and motivates them to be world class. I believe that this is a world class app. It’s not just a local app so this just motivates them to get out of their comfort zone and make stuff that will make an impact in the real world.”

If anybody holds any concerns that using this app might hamper their social skills due to talking to someone through a screen as opposed to in-person, then according to Oyekeye, that is nonsense.

“When people spend too much time behind computer screens, which we saw during COVID, it tends to inhibit social interaction and stuff like that, but this is actually gonna be the opposite because you might have potentially seen these people,” Oyekeye said.

He continued.

“Let’s say you walk by someone in the cafeteria five or six times or a hundred times. Then you meet them on the site, you have the tendency to have more confidence to say “Hi” and foster a deeper relationship with them.  When you meet them in person later on, you can actually make conversations with them, continue where you stopped, and potentially look for other people that can strengthen your social interaction skills.”