UO Grad Puts a Unique Spin on Social Networking

By Haley Martin

Remember your first concert? Remember rushing home right after and pinning your ticket stub to your bulletin board or placing it safely in a scrapbook? You wanted to keep the ticket safe so you could go back and always remember the moment your favorite rock star made eye contact with you, right?

Now fast forward a few years to today’s latest addition in the world of social networking: Stublisher. With Stublisher, the days of scrapbooking old ticket stubs are long gone and replaced with entirely new possibilities. Users can now organize and share photos from concerts and events, write about their memories and even make friends in the process.

The website combines features of Instagram and Facebook, but with an innovative twist and emphasis on concerts and events. Stublisher uses a unique geolocation technology to gather media shared in a specific location at a specific event to compile Instagram photos and content generated by a mass audience in that area. Twenty three-year-old co-founder, Kyle Banuelos, says that cutting-edge technology allows them to pull all of the media posted within a geolocation and share it in real-time or after the event. Stublisher users, he says, can create profiles and connect with other people from the event, such as other concert-goers or artists.

“With Stublisher, you can tune in to anything happening around the world, via photos, at any time,” Banuelos says. It’s a way of organizing what would normally be an overwhelming amount of content and making use of it. “Our vision is to connect people based on shared experiences,” he says. “We’re focused on building a community around these events, a place for everyone to share, collect and relive, regardless of friend group.”

Banuelos graduated from the University of Oregon in 2012 where he studied applied economics and business. He was inspired to start his own company after interning at another startup in LA called Acceptly, where the CEO encouraged him to pursue something of his own. Banuelos says taking that advice was the best decision he has ever made. “I’ve learned so much in such a short amount of time and I am grateful to wake up each morning and work on something I’m passionate about,” he says.

The Stublisher team is still working out some of the finer details, but so far have gotten positive feedback from their users. “It’s a neat concept. They pull some really cool photos and you get to view images of an event from all sorts of perspectives,” says Michel Calhoun who joined the social networking site a few months ago.

Banuelos and his team have learned that their site is even more useful than they originally thought. “We’re finding that Stublisher is not only a pretty neat product for people to use, but also a valuable tool for artists, brands and teams, because they’re finally able to leverage all the media produced at their events, automatically,” he says.

With the combination of unique new technology and the ever-growing realm of social networking, the experience of concerts and events extend beyond the moment you leave the venue doors. Now it will be easier than ever to revisit your glorious teenage years and that dazzling moment your favorite band graced the stage right before your eyes.