Sri Lanka’s first location-based social network Buzzbird debuts

Revolutionising social media in Sri Lanka, Buzzbird – a location based virtual notice board was launched this week by connecting hundreds of new users across the island.

Buzzbird is a mobile application developed in Sri Lanka which gives the pulse of a location. This innovative mobile app is a location based social media platform which enables its users to get a live feed of what is being said and shared via text, online links, photos and videos within a particular radius or a location. 

Buzzbird is the brainchild of Amrit Rupasinghe who later brought on industry veteran Nuwan Dehigaspitiya as co-founder and CTO. The app was developed with the objective of promoting citizen journalism. They felt that giving people access to hyper-local news and information in real-time was a very powerful concept. Amrit and Nuwan secured Rs. 7.5 million of venture funding to execute their vision.

Buzzbird team

A unique feature of Buzzbird’s newsfeed is its user rating system. For the purpose of populating the feed with good quality content, every interaction associated with a post accrues ‘buzz points’. Top contributors are highlighted in a leader board called the ‘Nest.’ Each post on the feed displays the authors buzz point count. This enables readers to gauge the quality of the author and the reliability of the post. This also helps users to better filter their personal feed without the unnecessary clutter of information which is commonly prevalent in most other social media platforms. 

Amrit Rupasinghe who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Buzzbird said that one of the key objectives of this app is to empower people with real-time localized news and information.  

“Buzzbird is the ideal platform for citizen journalism. The pseudo anonymity within the app promotes free expression. Oscar Wilde said, ‘Give a man a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth’. It’s an empowering platform for those trying to highlight issues within a neighbourhood, university, workplace or even the country in general,” he said. 

“We have developed an app that facilitates the sharing of local news bulletins, collaborative advice and even hyper-local commerce within locations. The app has many applications within universities, offices, business districts, tourists and expat communities hoping to tune-in to Sri Lanka in real-time. It allows users to have an aerial view of their country, kind of like a bird does. Hence, the name Buzzbird,” Amrit elaborated. 

“Another interesting aspect of the app is that the content is crowd sourced. The idea that people from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints will come together to contribute to a unified body of news and information that will promote cross country awareness,” he said.

The Buzzbird team envisions becoming the hyper-local notice board for South East Asia