Why Sponty?

How did people discover fun social activities before cell phones and text messaging happened?

Since I don’t know for sure, here’s a hypothetical scenario.  Let’s talk about Chad; a junior at Boston University in 1993.  Chad works at Best Buy part-time and is just heading home on a Friday evening hoping to hang out with some of his buds.  Figuring out where the best parties were at has gotten a lot tougher since Chad moved out of the dorms.  Things were much easier then because the dorms’ hallway chats were where he heard about what was happening later on in the day.  These days, he has to rely on his newly purchased answering machine with a mini-tape delivering messages from a handful of his buddies who may have been nice enough to keep him posted.  No one was going to be home to pick up their phone when he got home, so calling people who were already out was not an option.  

Fast forward to the early part of this century.  Julie is bored in class and she’s already sending text messages to her closest friends trying to put together a girls’ night out.

Now in 2009, Natasha tweets and updates her Facebook status in the cafeteria to see who else wants to go see Ratatat at the House of Blues.  But a few people say “awesome”, and 3 people “like” it, and a handful retweet it.  Eventually Natasha resorts to her default tools - calling and texting - and she gets Emily to come see Ratatat with her. The show was completely badass.

The basic problems remains the same, but the quality of the solution is as good as the tools you use.  In Chad’s case, he relied on an answering machine which gave him few options,  and he always wondered what he was missing out on.  Julia’s options were limited to who she actually felt comfortable texting or calling.  She knew that her extended circle of more than twenty friends surely had ideas of other fun things to do that night.  Natasha’s status updates and tweets got drowned in the noise, and her friends missed out on Ratatat.  

Your friends, and other people in the city collectively know about the best events in town, like a surprise U2 concert at the Somerville Theater or the circus animals crossing the Harvard Bridge.  If only you had a place to see their intentions ahead of time.  Sponty allows you to discover the best things happening around the city so you can get your friends “off” and out into the streets.  Sponty is about discovering fun events through people.