Illustration: Eva Wilhite
Ring By Spring is officially at APU. Due to the high volume of viewership, shares and requests, an Azusa Pacific portal of growing dating website RingBySpring.com launched Saturday, Feb. 22 after more than 200 students pre-registered. As of Monday evening, 212 students had signed up.
The new site connects students with other people exclusively from their universities via online profiles. According to the site’s mission statement, Ring By Spring was created as “a safe alternative for singles to find friendship and a real relationship with someone at their own school.”
“Let’s say you saw that girl that is really cute on campus and you want to talk to her. You go on the website, look for her name, and then start talking,” co-founder Christian Montoya said. “We want it to be simple for anyone to use.”
California Baptist University junior business majors Matthew Fuller, Matthew McMartin and Montoya founded the website this year at their school within a month of starting development.
After the success at Cal Baptist, students from other universities requested sites of their own.
“We knew this was going to be a big thing, but we just didn’t think it would take off this fast,” Montoya said.
Currently, Cal Baptist and APU are the only schools with launched portals, although Biola, Pepperdine and Point Loma Nazarene are well on their way to the 200 pre-registered students needed to open their sites. Students at Loyola Marymount, UC Berkeley and UC Riverside have also requested sites for their schools.
“Once the site launches, people are going to be able to make their own profiles, access other student profiles plus message and chat with different people,” Montoya said.
Fuller came up with the idea for the site over winter break. He said he was talking to his roommate about the true desires of college students, saying, “Every college student wants money and affection.”
Fuller approached his now-business partners McMartin and Montoya to help him with his project. The three of them have developed, launched and managed the site the past two months.
“We were so excited about this project,” Montoya said. “We knew this idea would be such a great hit, especially within schools like CBU.”
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Photo by Kimberly Smith
With more than 6,000 hits just for APU’s portal, RingBySpring.com has ignited conversation on campus.
“I think there is great potential for the site, but it also has the possibility to turn into a casual dating arena,” sophomore music and worship major Jessica Cabral said. “That’s treading into dangerous territory in both our school and culture.”
Other students, however, lack these reservations.
“I have lots of friends who are now married because of Internet dating websites,” said senior psychology major Gio Garcia. “I think it really works.”
News of the site has been published on the front page of university student publications at CBU as well as Point Loma Nazarene.
“It’s crazy because we did no promoting for the site,” Montoya said. “Our main tool of promotion has been word-of-mouth and the shares we have obtained through Facebook.”
APU is the second school on the website to have officially launched. According to website statistics, it is also the school with the most viewership and shares.
According to Azusa Pacific students who registered for the site, they decided to do so out of curiosity, peer pressure and opportunity.
“I signed up for it because I feel like eventually I’ll be the hipster of it before it catches on,” said an APU student who did not want to be named.
In order to keep up with the development, the creators have hired three interns to work with them as they improve and manage the site’s analytics, digital and marketing aspects.
“We are so excited with the development of the site,” Montoya said. “Now we are working extra hard, planning and marketing to keep up with the growth of the website.”