REVEALED: Southampton students invent MatesWeb

Three students from the University of Southampton have created the perfect site to make filling or finding a room much simpler.

Whether you are wanting to join an existing house or in need of more people for yours house MatesWeb is the site to use.

It was co-founded by final year students Valentine Luiz Orji, Economics and Management sciences, Tundé Alao, Computer Science, and Boateng, Aerospace Engineering.

This site is groundbreaking in how it helps you search for potential housemates. MatesWeb comes with the option of adding your interests, degree, uploading your photo and personal bio to your profile.

This eliminates the trolling that occurs on Facebook housing groups.

It is an effortless way to find either someone to live with you or to find people to live with,  based on their and your interests.

MatesWeb now even matches your interests with others who are using the site, and will send you suggestions to your profile based on compatibility.

Mates web is starting to become used by a growing number of students. Southampton student Eva Amerikanou found her housemates using the site.

She told the Tab:“I found a housemate on MatesWeb three days after posting my house on the site, it was very easy to use and the big advantage for me was that, rather than spamming Facebook pages with a large paragraph describing my house, I could do it in a single trusted place. By just sharing the link I could manage all the requests to join in one location.”

The Tab spoke to the co-founders Tundé and Valentine.

Tundé told the Tab: “During my internship last year in Stockholm, there were many services available to help me find houses but nothing to help me find housemates for these houses, I relied on word of mouth alone and I was so desperate that I was willing to live with anyone, irrespective of our suitability….

I saw how this problem could be solved with the Machine Learning techniques I have been learning throughout my course. Given enough information, is it possible for a computer to predict the most suitable housemates for any person. This is the problem we are trying to solve here at MatesWeb and we think it is possible.”

The site is very simple to use. Firstly, chose whether you want to join an existing house or whether you need more people for your house. Secondly, register and fill out your interests.

Co-founder Valentine also told the Tab: “The rising cost of housing in metropolitan cities like London and Southampton has basically resulted in workers and students requiring to share their housing with strangers in other to reduce costs. In most scenarios people end up living with people they can’t get along with …

So we developed MatesWeb to enable renters to view the profiles of their potential housemates as well as discuss and engage with them. Also with MatesWeb you can find other people who are also looking for housemates and team up to find a house with them.”