Missed connections can happen every day, whether it be riding on public transit, waiting in a check-out line or studying at the library. Conversations can end before contact information is exchanged, leaving people replaying the moment and wishing they had asked for a name and number.
Missed connections can happen every day, whether it be riding on public transit, waiting in a check-out line or studying at the library. Sarah Caulder / Daily Nexus
Fourth-year computer engineering major John Lins developed IV Missed Connections in an attempt to resolve this issue for students at UC Santa Barbara and locals in the Isla Vista area. On the website, users can post about missed encounters, upvote submissions, send direct messages (DMs) and view a map of all posts.
IV Missed Connections was initially launched last spring quarter as a website. Since then, it has been updated to include an app version, which allows users to enable location tracking and automatically check for posts in their proximity that match their description.
According to Lins, the website has slowly grown in popularity through word of mouth, with viewership especially increasing over this past quarter. Currently, it gets 4,000 to 10,000 views daily and has reached a total of around 400,000 views.
Since its launch, it has been updated to include the entire University of California system, where students can make posts for their respective campuses.
The website uses an artificial intelligence (AI) system to filter out inappropriate comments that include surnames or content that is illegal, threatening or overtly sexual.
To support the website and app, Lins created a corresponding automated Instagram page with over 3,000 followers, which automatically posts the most upvoted missed connection as a post every three days.
Although IV Missed Connections is digital, Lins said he believes it brings human interaction “closer to in-person” because it is grounded in situations that occur in real life.
“It could be as a friend, it could be romantically, it could be anything,” Lins said. “You want to find them again and there might be a chance that you could get a second chance to see them again.”
Lins was inspired to create his website by an Instagram account, UCSB Missed Connections, that was popular among students three years ago. Users could send DMs to the account’s administrators and have a post created to reach out to a missed connection.
“The people who were running the account probably graduated, so it’s not [active]. The last post was two or three years ago,” Lins said. “So I thought it would be kind of interesting to make an automated system that just did everything automatically.”
Lins emphasized that he believes IV Missed Connections is an upgrade of the Instagram account he took inspiration from due to its automated features.
“My goal is to make it as automated as possible. That old Instagram account that someone was managing was manual, but people get busy and then it dies and everyone’s disappointed,” Lins said. “In this case, if I get busy and I can’t work on it, it’s still online and people can still use it.”
According to Lins, he has seen instances in which users of the website have actually found a missed connection.
“There were some people that commented their Instagram, which is reasonable, and then there’s some people [who] put their Discord,” Lins said. “I remember there was someone who put their number. I was like, ‘Wait, that’s kind of crazy’ because you need it to be anonymous on both sides.”
Although Lins is about to graduate, he aims to continue working on the website and has plans to continue developing features and creating marketing ideas. IV Missed Connections is just one of the projects that Lins has developed since he began programming in middle school, and he emphasized that he has many other ideas for future projects.
“My goal is just to get rich enough where I don’t have to work a job and just do my projects all day,” Lins said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 6 of the April 23 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
