81–90 of 110 posts
However, some acquaintances of mine have recently launched a (apparently successful) messaging app for new university students to the university they attended. Their users are in 80 countries and spend 30 minutes per day on the app messaging each other. So I guess there are still niche cases.
I would like to comment a little bit on my competitors. Facebook and meetup.com are search based events. If you want to find something to do you have to search it. You could get invited as well but if you don't you will never know about an event unless you actively look for it. They are not the same culture ethier. I would not go on meetup.com to see if my friends are going to the bar. The same goes for Facebook. Als…
With the younger generations moving away from facebook, etc, I think this could work - as others have said below. Good luck.
Wait. You're in Texas and are trying to get people to use an app that encourages them to meet in person, often in groups? During a pandemic where people are dying? I always want to be supportive of anyone building anything, but seriously... stop. Put it on ice for 6-12 months. This app sucks. Technology should be used to help people. Spend your time doing something good during the pandemic, not getting them killed.
I'm not sure i've ever read an HN comment i find as distasteful as this. The OP is building an app to help people meet, yet by their own admission have managed to attract one user. They asked a question about a common issue engineers face: onboarding and marketing. Your comment ignores nearly every shred of this substance. Instead you accuse them of "getting [users] killed"? Patently absurd. To cut them down at the k…
I see rude, snarky comments on HN without a good motivation, so that's surprising. Health and safety is probably the best motivation for calling anyone out that I can think of? Do we whisper gently that the building is on fire?
> Instead you accuse them of "getting [users] killed"? Patently absurd.
Balderdash! Here's an example of people getting together for a social event. And several dying.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/3-deaths-147-coronaviru...
I'd be more upset if someone didn't say something, and I'm sad to see them being shamed for saying something.
Wait. You're in Texas and are trying to get people to use an app that encourages them to meet in person, often in groups? During a pandemic where people are dying? I always want to be supportive of anyone building anything, but seriously... stop. Put it on ice for 6-12 months. This app sucks. Technology should be used to help people. Spend your time doing something good during the pandemic, not getting them killed.
I'm not sure i've ever read an HN comment i find as distasteful as this. The OP is building an app to help people meet, yet by their own admission have managed to attract one user. They asked a question about a common issue engineers face: onboarding and marketing. Your comment ignores nearly every shred of this substance. Instead you accuse them of "getting [users] killed"? Patently absurd. To cut them down at the k…
He’s lucky the lesson learned was relatively inexpensive. Everyone needs honest and realistic feedback.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure i've ever read an HN comment i find as distasteful as this. The OP is building an app to help people meet, yet by their own admission have managed to attract one user. They asked a question about a common issue engineers face: onboarding and marketing. Your comment ignores nearly every shred of this substance. Instead you accuse them of "getting [users] killed"? Patently absurd. To cut them down at the k…
Their comment addresses the fundamental substance of the submission. It's as if someone started their sunscreen door to door business in January: The fundamental timing is broken.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well my signup screen (first thing the user sees) has a background photo of a night life party to set the tone. Maybe I should make it darkmode themed to set the tone more but I don't want to discourage people using this to meet up for coffee. I strongly agree though, lots of hard work will be needed to be put in culture.
Why are you forcing singup? Skip that, make it optional. When people are invited to an event send them a unique link tied to their email/phone number/WhatsApp or whatever. Create a long lived cookie that identifies them as that user. If someone really wants to create an account with a login and password let them, but don’t make them create yet another account to manage. Edit: Also as you build the graph out, consider…
Wait. You're in Texas and are trying to get people to use an app that encourages them to meet in person, often in groups? During a pandemic where people are dying? I always want to be supportive of anyone building anything, but seriously... stop. Put it on ice for 6-12 months. This app sucks. Technology should be used to help people. Spend your time doing something good during the pandemic, not getting them killed.
I'm not sure i've ever read an HN comment i find as distasteful as this. The OP is building an app to help people meet, yet by their own admission have managed to attract one user. They asked a question about a common issue engineers face: onboarding and marketing. Your comment ignores nearly every shred of this substance. Instead you accuse them of "getting [users] killed"? Patently absurd. To cut them down at the k…
The woe of a startup founder being tasked to debate his quest of influencing agency of others?
Some of us had ethics in engineering where it was made clear the things we make can influence peoples agency.
I’m sorry your privilege for mass influence of public agency might be impacted by open debate. That informed might somehow undermine you or similarly minded free enterprise folks, is of course to be avoided.
We shouldn’t have the agency of others considered at all!
To think that’s what you think you’re defending. American’s are still really bad at stats.
To be fair, the post was about the difficulty in finding users. Maybe OP should take the hint about the market. The world isn’t obliged to but much of its attention into every random first world tech bro’s emotional fantasy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their comment addresses the fundamental substance of the submission. It's as if someone started their sunscreen door to door business in January: The fundamental timing is broken.
Except if you started the sunscreen door to door business development in peak selling months you wouldn't have a company built to actually supply the sunscreen.
What’s wrong with demanding tech addicted randos check their privilege given a scientific reality of both a pandemic and the ease at which these gadgets can influence decisions?
Is that not offering alternatives? Oh sure maybe the most cynical, but it’s nonetheless an alternative option.
Why is avoiding a blunt conversation so taboo? In a forum where open debate of all ideas is supposedly allowable, in a community largely built originally by a nation where free speech is supposedly the holiest of holies? Would the open web have worked in China or much of the rest of the world in the prior decades?
What is the goal with the rhetorical circles and shallow emotional boosting except to continually exist in Saturday morning cartoon levels of concern and maturity for reality outside of ones own immediate attention?
Startup types are a statistical minority of the human doer market. Take it on the chin that mathematically you’re ultimately as important as the child political prisoners we ignore.
Push a button, get people to hang out with you.
Problem is that people meet up using chat, that’s the core thing you have to be better than. Better, faster, simpler or easier than WhatsApp/Messenger/iMessage/SMS/FB Events/Instagram/Snapchat. Those things have extreme network effects and you probably will not dislodge them, I would aim somewhere else.
This exact app is detailed in one of NFX’s write ups as the “wrong” approach.
If you still want to try getting users, throw it on Product Hunt and see if it takes. The only momentarily successful version of this was Down to Lunch - and only because they harvested your entire contacts list and then messaged every single person at once to get them using the app. They’re gone now. It was simply easier to group chat your friends “yo movies?”.