What’s Fizzin’?

Who doesn't love to gossip?

The college app “FIZZ” is all about starting conversations and spreading information, but how long do we have until this app fizzes out? 

Founded in 2020 by Teddy Solomon and Ashton Cofer, Fizz is a social media network that is only accessible to college students. Students create anonymous posts and upvote fellow posts. Currently, the app is used in around 100 colleges and aims to reach 250 by 2024. Founded by investors, the app has gained $41 million in capital. Recently, the app made its way to Lower Manhattan.

Launching at Pace on October 9th, 2024, Pace University students filled the servers with gossip and their thoughts about the new platform. How did the app launch so successfully? Money and Doughnuts. 

Instagram stories from Pace students were filled with the same promotional content, leaving me to wonder where they got it from. After talking to a top-ranked Fizz user from Pace, who stated to me during our conversation that they would like to be anonymous, it was because they were paid to do so.

“We were added to this group chat with Fizz employees who sent these ads for us to post, and if we did it, we would get like $15 or $10. It’s a small amount, but because it was such a simple task, why wouldn't you do it?”

They pulled out their phone from their beige tote bag to show me a text chain with promising messages of payment for promotion. This successful promotion tactic explained the influx of usage in the app in such a short time. 

In addition to the social media campaign, the app set up a table outside of campus and gave students a donut when they signed up for the app. Neither of these tactics is unusual for short-term engagement and sign-ups, but what about the long run?

According to an article published by Pulse 2.0, “...in several recent campus launches, Fizz penetrated more than 50% of the student body within two months, and across the board, app usage is showing a steeper growth rate than original launches at schools like Stanford and Pepperdine, which now have over 95% adoption.”

Anonymous gossip apps aren't anything new, and after the fall of one of the first, YikYak, it is surprising that Fizz can retain their members. YikYak became the ninth-most-ranked app in the United States within twelve months, but was ranked one of the ten most-funded startups to fail in 2017 by techcrunch.com. The app failed because of concerns over hate speech and threats. So what makes Fizz different than past gossip apps? It’s simplicity. 

The same user from above stated, “The app does what it needs to do. There are no pop-up ads or catfishes or anything like that. It’s just everyone throwing shade at everyone else. We used to have those gossip accounts on Instagram that weren't moderated or updated, and now we don't need that middleman.” The gossip accounts they are talking about were staples to the Pace University media scene last year, like “Pace Crushes and Confessions,” “Pace Confessions,” and “55 John Street Tea.” These accounts would spread negative, and sometimes creepy, posts about fellow students that were submitted by other students anonymously.

The problem with these accounts is that a single student is moderating all the content and can be selective with what they post, whereas Fizz is the opposite - you can post whatever you want with moderation by multiple verified students. There isn't much moderation on the app, but I haven't seen any very hateful posts. Many of the most popular posts on the app are trying to find comic relief about the broken elevators, 15 Beekman breaking, the new cafe, 1 Pace Plaza being “dead,” and the lack of straight men on campus. According to a poll on Fizz with 263 total votes, the underclassmen overpower the upperclassmen by 85%. 

The usage of Fizz has been fairly positive and comedic with posts of shade here and there; however, the app has had some flaws with its current success. In an article published in 2021 by the Stanford Daily, students Aditya Saligrama, Miles McCain, and Cooper de Nicola conducted an investigation on Fizz’s security. What they found was that “Fizz used Google’s Firestore database product to store data, including user information and posts. Firestore can be configured to use a set of security rules to prevent users from accessing data they should not have access to. However, Fizz did not have the necessary security rules set up, making it possible for anyone to query the database directly and access a significant amount of sensitive user data. Phone numbers and/or email addresses for all users were fully accessible, and posts and upvotes were directly linkable to this identifiable information. It was possible to identify the author of any post on the platform.” They reported these issues to Fizz and were threatened with a lawsuit unless they kept quiet. In October 2023, a Fizz employee created “a series of inappropriate and fake posts in a few of our college communities.”

With Fizz’s new approach to user-generated content and social networking, it’s not clear how long Pace students have until the app fizzes out. Until then, the app will continue to be a space for many students to vent their frustrations about the university.