Kricket launches new phone app

Sarah Doiron

July 9, 2015

The Kricket web app that was introduced in March 2014 by Quinnipiac alumni is being relaunched into a new phone app that allows users to post comments and emojis from their location.

Connor Croteau, Tom Nassr and Stanley Martone created Kricket during their senior year at Quinnipiac. Kricket began as a web app that allowed neighbors to notify each other if they were being too loud, according to Nassr. Since then, Martone has left the group, and together Croteau and Nassr have worked to revamp the app.

“Kricket began 18 months ago as a way to help reasonable people be reasonable neighbors,” Nassr posted on ThunderClap. “Kricket evolved into an application that lets us all be neighbors to each other.”

Since then, the company has expanded into, “a map based, anonymous network for passionate people around you to assemble and be heard,” according to its website.

The Kricket app is completely anonymous and users can post an emoji using geolocation, as well as make a comment for other users to see. It also allows for people to tag events to the map, with each post having a 24-hour lifespan. Nassr says this is so information can stay fresh and relevant to what is going on in the area.

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With each interaction a user will earn karma, similar to Yik Yak. Nassr said. As of right now it’s just a number, but eventually you will be able to unlock additional emoji’s and earn other functionalities on the app as you receive more karma.

Nassr said inspirations for the new Kricket app came from a variety of apps.

“We picked our favorite aspects of a select few,” he said. “Mostly, it came from Waze, Snapchat, Yik Yak, Google Maps, Craigslist, Twitter and Foursquare.”

Kricket is available for iOS, Android and on the web, according to Nassr. The original “please quiet down” website is no longer available.

Nassr said the Kricket app can be used from anywhere in the world and it has no affiliation with any university.

“That was a fundamental change going from the old Kricket to the new Kricket,” he said. “People can tag an emoji and comment whereever they are and say whatever they want.”

There were many difficulties in creating that app that caused months of delay on the relaunch of Kricket, according to Nassr.

“When we started, we didn’t know how to code,” he said. “We are self-taught developers. After going through nearly 400 interviews with developers, we found an amazing guy in France. Once he became involved, things ran much smoother on the development side of things.”

Nassr said the success of Kricket is going to be determined by its users.
“As we implement additional features, give the user more tools to communicate in this anonymous, temporary way, we will begin to understand what they want and build the platform around those use cases,” he said.

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