A group of students from Cornell University have launched a website called ‘The Quarantine Buddy’, which is a program aimed at connecting strangers and combating loneliness.
Sam Brickman, Jordyn Goldzweig and Alisa Lai are all Computer Science majors who wanted to use their skills to help make a difference.
“We noticed that people were feeling more socially isolated more than ever right now, and we wanted to build something to help people where people are still feeling connected to one another while still social distancing,” said Brickman, co-founder, Quarantine Buddy.
“When this whole thing started, we realized we had so much free time on our hands and we have to figure out a good way to channel the stress and all of the negativity into something positive,” added Jordyn Goldzweig, another one of the co-founder’s.
How do you do it? Well, answer 10 questions and you’re on the way there. Choose some other preferences, and all of a sudden – it’s happening.
“We built this matching algorithm which automatically goes through all of the signups and figures out the best possible pairings, introduces them together so the process is streamlined and doesn’t require a lot of manual work on our end either,” added Brickman. “We kind of were skeptical about whether people would be willing to talk to a complete stranger and if they’d be excited to talk to someone who they’ve never met before, but everyone seems super enthusiastic about this idea because they realize that everyone is really more similar then they previously thought.”
There are already more than 6,000 users since it launched on April 1st.
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