Student-created Fridaymap hopes to help Cal Poly students discover hidden gems

This is a cross-published piece with Mustang News, more information can be found here.

Computer engineering sophomore Bowman Edebohls created a website to allow students to mark places in and around San Luis Obispo on a map and see what other people in the community are up to. Students can add comments and photos to talk about what is going on at the location, helping students know more about what there is to do in the area. 

Called Fridaymap, currently about 300 Cal Poly students are registered for the site. It initially launched on Reddit about a week before fall quarter.

Only Cal Poly students can join the service currently, according to Edebohls. Students who want to join can sign up with their Cal Poly email. 

Edebohls was inspired to create this website after he and some friends were looking for interesting places to hang out around San Luis Obispo and had to look through blog posts to find somewhere to go.

“One of these places was Reservoir Creek Falls, Reservoir Canyon Falls, something like that,” Edebohls said. “It was literally a cave behind a waterfall, and I realized if I hadn’t put in a bunch of effort digging through these old articles, I would have never found something like this.”

Edebohls created this website this summer during his software development internship in Boston at SPHERE Research Infrastructure.

Math sophomore Matthew Files has been using the website for about a month, and he uses it to take photos and find interesting things in the area. He posts about where he goes on walks. 

“They did post about a sign up on the mountain[the P], I was going to go look at that,” Files said. “It allows me to see new things I guess, just share where I’m going.”

Files said the app has grown after he joined but said that a lot of people post mainly within the Cal Poly campus.

“There’s not many people using it,” Files said. “There’s a lot of people that just post the same thing over and over.”

Edebohls does not get any money from Fridaymap, but he said the cost to keep it up and running is cheap. He said in the future, he might sell ads with some of the businesses downtown, but right now he does not need to do that. 

Edebohls hopes for it to become a useful student resource and said that he likes how computer engineering gives him the chance to build a website that can help a lot of people really fast.

“Just last week, I was on Fridaymap and someone, one of the marks for the Subway at Poly Canyon Village and somebody posted a discount code in the comments, and so I was able to use that and save five bucks.”

Edebohls said that he has seen a lot of marks popping up all over the map as people are beginning to comment and talk.

“I’m watching to see how Fridaymap evolves, how people use it before I try to push it in a particular direction,” Edebohls said. “I’m definitely not without a plan, but I definitely want to see where it goes first.” 

When asked about the name, Edebohls said “it’s called Fridaymap because it’s Friday.”