Tyler Summers
Contributing Writer
Steeze a new app has hit the iPhone with its main goal of asking the user to “peep or toss”.
Steeze is a social media app co-created by a UMBC alumni. Its App store page describes itself as “a one stop shop for all of your social media interactions and news!”
“A lot of thought went into the design of this app and we probably couldn’t even begin to tell you how many hours went into designing the app’s interface alone,” said Chief Technology Officer Asad Rizvi.
From the very beginning, the team wanted to have a very clean and functional look while integrating the app’s features.
Rizvi said “this meant having to balance everyone’s ideas: what was actually possible, what would be best for the user, and maintaining a level of uniqueness that couldn’t already be found in other apps.”
Steeze has three founders: Ryan Bogle (CEO), Asad Rizvi and Shahan Rizvi (Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer). Ryan’s idea for Steeze came about by merging the best existing ideas in the social media world into a kind of one stop shop app, while filling in the spaces with things you can’t do on other apps.
This is where the whole idea for “peep or toss” started, becoming the main driving force behind the app. Ryan linked up with Asad Rizvi and Shahan Rizvi to help bring his idea to life.
It was through Asad that the founders eventually met with UMBC alumni Martin Figueroa-Ramirez, a.k.a. ROM.
Since graduating from UMBC, ROM has become a celebrated sneaker artist and was recently recognized as one of the “Top 10 Sneaker Artists in the World.”
Asad thought ROM’s creativity and artistic skill could be a good fit for Steeze. That’s how ROM went on to become the company’s Head User Interface Designer, working closely with Ryan to develop a sleek yet creatively functional interface.
In its most basic sense, Steeze is a way to share and receive opinions from your friends by just swiping a finger, which is where “peep or toss” comes in.
For the longest time Facebook users have been plagued with the lack of a dislike button. With Steeze, the user essentially can post a picture or video and if their Steeze friends are feeling generous they can slide to the left to peep (like).
On the other hand, their Steeze friends can slide to the right to toss (dislike) as a simple way of giving feedback. The ability to toss a picture is what changes the game, in terms of getting a second opinion.
With Steeze, you can also customize your photos through a series of editing tools that typically aren’t available on just one photo-sharing app.
Users have a complete photo editing suite at their disposal where they can adjust brightness and saturation, draw on their pictures, make memes, put frames around their pictures, or blur things out.
Another part of Steeze is that it has a built in MAG, where users can choose from a list of sources to read via RSS feeds. Users can pick which sources their MAG feed includes by adjusting their settings.
The app has only been out exclusively for a couple of months on the iPhone. However, Rizvi said they hope to adapt it for Android and as a standalone website in the coming months.
