Apps meet academia with Crowdstory

Crowdstory, a social networking solution enabling users to tether audio messages to specific locations, is the product of the University of Oklahoma's new Software Business Accelerator initiative, which challenged a 10-member interdisciplinary student team to conceptualize and develop a mobile application. A beta version of the Crowdstory launched on Apple's App Store in March--a revamped and improved 1.1 edition followed weeks later, incorporating a newsfeed and usability enhancements. In addition, Android and web-based versions are presently in the pipeline. FierceDeveloper spoke to Crowdstory co-founder and Software Business Accelerator project team leader TJ Moen about the challenges facing first-time developers, the importance of user feedback and mobile's impact on academia.