Inspiration
We were inspired by HackGT's track to develop Cheat Codes. What's one area of life that's always putting you in sticky situations? That's right, your social life. Friendships are hard, and managing them on social media platforms is even harder. One of our team members wanted to find a way to add back an old friend on Snapchat, without having to go through the embarrassing and awkward conversation to ask them IRL. So we built BePetty, a friendship manager (or killer) for Snapchat.
What it does
BePetty basically gives you superpowers. By analyzing and visualizing your Snapchat metadata, BePetty enables you to take advantage of your interaction history to guide your future actions. Who have you blocked? Who have you ignored? Who ignored you, and why do they still deserve to be your friend? The information you wouldn't be able to normally see in the Snapchat app, along with the ability to act on it, easily accessible to encourage all of your petty vendettas.
How we built it
Using data directly from a user's Snapchat account, we filter and serve metadata content in a way that is easy to understand, and easy to act upon. Our platform is a lightweight web application built with pure HTML, JavaScript, CSS/SASS, and takes literally seconds to connect your data with full functionality. With the ability to see all of your friendships and interaction history, and make moves on the spot, you can optimize your social media platform reach to your exact liking.
Challenges we ran into
Development is never easy, especially under a time crunch. We ran into issues with the layout and design of our application, with the goal of preserving and displaying as much data as possible, without overwhelming the user and providing distracting options. Additionally, we also ran into issues of new features breaking old ones, an age old story. Continuous testing and refactoring helped us overcome many of these challenges.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We've built out a clean, minimalistic, fully functional prototype of BePetty, and we're proud to share it with HackGT9!
What we learned
Understanding how to interact with different data formats, web development on local servers, pesky JavaScript features, and optimizing UI/UX design.
What's next for BePetty (JavaScript, CSS/SASS, HTML)
Snapchat is only the beginning. Social media platforms, watch out - we're coming.
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