Since its launch at Northwestern in early November, the website Like a Little has generated both interest and traffic among students.
LAL, located at www.likealittle.com, is a flirting-facilitator platform that provides students with an outlet to compliment and talk about crushes as well as to lament missed connections through anonymous posts. Users can also comment on and ‘like’ posts.
Michael Haapaniemi, the NU chapter’s founding member, became interested in LAL after his friend from Stanford University told him about Stanford’s branch, which is the original LAL. The McCormick freshman contacted the founder, recruited several friends to moderate the site and debuted LAL at NU a few weeks later.
“(Haapaniemi) was like … ‘Do you think this is just something specific to Stanford, which is so technological and just a virtual type of campus? (It’s) a Silicon Valley campus. Do you think it could really work here?'” said William McLaughlin, a Weinberg freshman and LAL administrator. “I said, ‘Sure, why not? What do you have to lose?'”
These questions were answered within four days of the site’s launch, when page views reached several thousand per day, Haapaniemi said.
“The first day, when testing posts, somebody actually ‘liked’ it on Facebook, and we weren’t even ready to tell people,” he said. “From there, (the site) just went on its own.”
McLaughlin and Haapaniemi said LAL appeals to students because their posts remain anonymous and the site’s environment is flirty, fun and positive. When posts that include names or derogatory statements appear on the site, administrators delete them at their discretion. McLaughlin said such posts occur about once a week.
Although the LAL team takes its job running and moderating the site seriously, McLaughlin and Haapaniemi said taking the posts seriously is another matter.
“(LAL) is never going to replace real-life flirtation,” McLaughlin said. “You can’t go on Like a Little and score.”
Some students share the same sentiment about the posts. Weinberg freshman Daniel Flores said he visits the site when he wants a laugh.
“We just read,” he said. “Sometimes we’ll look for some of the dumbest ones, the funniest ones.”
Like Flores, Medill freshman Gabe Bergado said he spends most of his time on the site reading others’ posts. He has posted on LAL but only as a joke.
“I look at the ones that are in places I have visited recently,” he said. “It’s kind of funny to see who was posting and see if you can figure out who are some of the people they’ve been posting about.”
Bergado said he believes the site’s popularity will be short-lived, and LAL will die down like other websites, such as FMyLife. Haapaniemi acknowledged this. He said some other outlet could replace LAL in the future because technology changes constantly.
Despite doubts about the site’s longevity, Haapaniemi said LAL plans to place advertisements on all chapter pages eventually in order to pay the site’s interns.
Regardless of what happens to the site, he said he considers LAL a success.
“It’s a cool thing from an entrepreneur’s perspective to successfully bring it to a campus and have everyone like it,” Haapaniemi said.
For Flores, LAL has impacted him in more than just a little way.
“It definitely fosters a sense (that) there is a dating scene here,” he said. “Everyone’s watching you at all times. You never know who’s going to see you or who’s been noticing you.”
