Pton.in connects students to peers over the summer

A new student-created website called Pton.in provides University students with a portal to see where their peers will be over the summer.

The site was created by Jason Adleberg ’14, Momchil Tomov ’14, Raymond Zhong ’14 and Brian Tubergen ’13 earlier this year and was submitted as a HackPrinceton project. Adleberg said that the idea for the website came from the lack of resources that offer students the opportunity to connect with fellow Princetonians over the summer.

“I was in the middle of nowhere in Tanzania [last summer], and these two Princeton students actually ended up showing up, and I had no idea at all. I just bumped into them on the street, and they were wearing Princeton stuff,” Adleberg said. “A lot of us go to cool, foreign places over the summer, and it’s hard to keep track of where everyone else is.”

The site currently consists of a map marked with students’ profile picture thumbnails and a timeline function that marks out the durations for which students will be in their listed location. It uses Facebook to retrieve profile pictures and to ensure that users of the site are Princeton students. The site also offers a feature to filter students by certain groups, such as eating clubs and residential colleges.

Currently, the site has 359 members, and Tomov said they hope the website will eventually increase its membership to include all University students. USG president Shawon Jackson ’15, who recently helped promote the website in one of his school-wide emails, said that he is excited to see a web app that will help students find fellow students to room with over the summer.

“We got a few suggestions about [students looking for roommates over the summer], so our Information Technology Committee was going to pursue the project,” Jackson said. “But at the same time, we heard about this other site being developed, so we’re very excited that there was a group of students who were working on this initiative.”

The site is also working to partner with class presidents, especially freshman class president-elect Justin Ziegler ’16. Tomov said that they plan to get all freshmen signed up for the service and expand the site’s membership through the partnership.

The team is currently focused on this expansion within the University and on making sure that the site runs seamlessly for students here, Tomov said. Adleberg said that their current goal is to reach a member base of thousands of Princeton students, after which they would consider expanding beyond Princeton to other universities as well.

“The long-term goal would be to expand beyond Princeton. Right now, all of our focus is to get everything right on our own campus — essentially, take over 100 percent of the market, get every single Princeton student signed up on the website,” Tomov said. “Once we have that, once we make sure it’s a really seamless service, that we have all of the features, all of the user interface, then maybe we will expand to other schools.”

Due to incorrect information provided to The Daily Princetonian, an earlier version of this article misstated the number of members pton.in has. There are currently 359 subscribers. The 'Prince' regrets the error.