A new app created by a UCLA student aims to connect communities across the UCLA campus.

Me And You Always is a social media app that requires a UCLA email address to join, said Ryan Murphy, the co-founder of the app. He added that the app allows users to view pages for UCLA clubs, specific pages of users who share similar interests and events happening around campus.

Murphy, who is an alumnus of the University of Virginia, said he was first inspired to create the app because he felt lonely after entering the Navy SEALs pipeline, which he has since left because of an Achilles tear.

“When I went into the military, I was immediately separated from all my friends and family and saw how hard it was to connect communities, and so that is what led me to wanting to work on this,” he said.

Milad Mesbahi, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, said he became Murphy’s partner in co-founding the app after the pair met because they were in the same fraternity and realized they shared a similar vision.

Mesbahi added that after working for BeReal, he realized more features could be added to create a more rounded experience, including the ability to see people’s interests and the events they were attending.

“I think as a student, I really want to see what the other 40,000 UCLA students are doing and all the cool things they have to offer,” he said.

Murphy added that he wanted to focus on college communities because despite more social platforms existing, he feels people have fewer friends. He said his app is unique because most conventional social media apps are designed around either dating or photographic content rather than creating community cultures.

“If you were to go online and be like, ‘I want to go to where the UCLA community exists,’ to us the answer is there’s really nowhere to go,” Murphy said.

MAYA also tries to avoid some of the distrust that comes with running a social media app, with many students suspicious of the app’s intentions after a flurry of other recently released applications, Mesbahi said.

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Noah Reisenauer, a second-year business economics student, said he first experienced the MAYA app as a beta tester, adding that he now is working to help advertise it on Bruin Walk.

He said he enjoys using the app because all the people on it are based at UCLA and because he feels it focuses on meaningful information, including majors, career paths and plans for later in life.

“This year, when I’m taking Econ classes, I plan on making a little circle because I know a lot of people on MAYA that are Econ majors now,” Reisenauer said.

Reisenauer also said one of his favorite features of the app is the ability to see nearby events. The app features a mix of events listed by users and ones aggregated by staff members, including UCLA sports home games, speaker series and off-campus parties, Murphy said.

Murphy also said he and Mesbahi hope the app will be able to benefit UCLA clubs and organizations by making it easier for them to reach out to potential members. Some campus organizations, including the Club Sampling Club and the USAC Office of the President, already have pages on the app.

“We’re talking to all these different clubs and stuff like that,” he said. “The idea is, if we’re bringing all the students under one umbrella to one platform, we can help you reach them all.”