Floxx, the re-launched Fitfinder now backed by serial UK Angel investor Doug Richard, has re-emerged after a difficult birth on the campus of a UK university. To rewind quickly:
Last year Rich Martell, 21, a final-year computer sciences student at University College London, founded of a UK site integrated with Facebook and Twitter allowing students to flirt. Sounds like The Facebook huh? Except this student was fined £300 for bringing his university into disrepute. FitFinder only started in May but rapidly expanded to universities across the country before having to be taken down.
UCL said it had been contacted by a number of other universities unhappy about FitFinder. It fined Martell £300 under UCL’s “Disciplinary Code of Bringing the College into Disrepute” and told him that failure to pay the fine would put his degree at risk.
FitFinder had, of course, risque content, allowing students to “spot” attractive people in at their college and post a message about them in the hope they’d get a response. Women’s groups have criticised the site while supporters call it merely tongue-in-cheek.
Martell took the site down, but was later contacted by Richard.
So what do we have?
Well essentially it’s the same site. You can post 140 character messages that describe anyone you think is “hot” that has caught your eye. With the new Floxx, you can post on a map, effectively plotting where the “fittest” (as in good looking) people have been hanging out. As the site says “This makes it very easy to decide where you should grab your next coffee!”
Richard thinks it will be bit. Let’s see. I am waiting for the first Daily Mail headline employing the word stalking…