New app Smack Social making planning social events easier

SALT LAKE CITY — BYU alumni created a new app called Smack Social, and its mission is to make event planning easy and rewarding.

Anyone who’s ever tried to coordinate a get-together or an event has likely dealt with cluttered group messaging and flaky responses. Smack Social’s CEO Whitney Graham and Product Officer Kent Broadbent created the app to cut out that middleman.

“This is the story for families, for church groups [and] for clubs,” Broadbent said. “My brother missed my sister-in-law’s birthday party because it was buried in our family’s group chat.”

How does Smack Social work?

Using Smack Social, users can plan events in advance or on the fly, and their friends will know about the event without having to contact the organizer directly.

The developers say the process allows many new college students to break out of their shells and make new friends. Graham described one such user.

“She, kind of, had this ah-ha moment of ‘I don’t need to get all of the people to RSVP to something,'” Graham said. “‘I don’t need to plan around everyone else’s schedules … Instead, if I just plan something, I throw it in Smack, everyone knows it’s happening … people will show up.'”

When Smack Social streamlined Graham’s Pickleball party, she realized how impactful the app was.

“I was gonna cry happy tears, because … I’m a hobbyist,” she said. “It’s so frustrating because I love getting together and it’s difficult. So when it filled up in four minutes, … I was like ‘Oh my gosh, that was so easy.'”

She said the assistance of the app helped her focus on having fun with her friends rather than having to text everyone and wait for responses.

Graham hopes college students, church group leaders, or any kind of hobbyist will see how Smack Social helps them plan events.

Devin Oldroyd contributed to this story.

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