Jonathan Hasson and Lara Varjabedian, entrepreneurs and co-Founders of Dubai based UBQT, introduce their social media platform that helps people truly reconnect and brings back the ‘social’ aspect in social media.
The story on how Jonathan and Lara reconnected is actually behind the creation of the app.
The story behind the app
Being global citizens and despite having connected multiple times in the past three decades, Jonathan and Lara had lost track of their respective whereabouts. It was only coincidentally, through a mutual friend overseas, that they fortunately found out that they were both residing (again) in the same city – Dubai. Thus, they realised how they had lost touch with a lot of their contacts; from former colleagues, classmates, professional acquaintances to friends and how they might be missing out on the opportunity to catch-up with them.
How it is different from other apps
Busy schedules between work and family make it challenging to book a dedicated time with people. UBQT is changing that as it allows to go straight to the point of setting a time in the calendar with a contact by blocking an exact date and location, months in advance or on the spur of the moment, without having to be bombarded by endless social media content or conversations. Thanks to location-based features, UBQT is helping its growing tribe, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and globally, to catch-up IRL (in real life) when they are near each other or travelling to the same city, thus helping them re-connect on a professional or personal level.
“We are very proud to officially announce the availability of our platform made in the UAE, which has a very simple goal: to help people spend less time in the digital world and instead use that precious time to catch-up in the physical world. We are incredibly connected digitally, yet so disconnected humanly. Lara and I sat down to think about how to truly bring back value to human connections and optimize everyone’s time by helping to organize catch-ups with people we have lost contact with or are unaware that they might be passing around the same location at the same time; UBQT was born” said Jonathan Hasson, co-Founder and CEO of UBQT.
Unique features for less screen time and more lifetime
People are very busy with less time for social interactions, and current social media encourage virtual connections rather than in-person. UBQT is the solution to help build new memories and overcome loneliness too. The idea is very simple: to help people reconnect with contacts of their choice.
- It is a platform focused on quality where any user can define the scope of the private network and whom to connect with.
- There are no options for direct messages or sharing content, the main goal is to be up-to-date with people’s travelling schedule and availability, and each user is free to share a status or not.
- Having a status, telling connections that there is a trip planned to a specific country or city at a specific date and that coffee, lunch or dinner might be options, is easy and allows for contacts to directly send a calendar invite and book a catch-up. It’s unique and time-efficient.
- Unlike others, the app purposely limits all other possibilities so that people do not get this feeling of being overwhelmed by too many requests.
