Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

oncircles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 144 posts

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#31

Post by danjac »

jstrafy wrote: post #25
chrisco255 wrote: post #14

Great work on the app! I haven't used it yet, as I'm reluctant to download an app or even sign up for an app without a clear demo of how it works. The video on the landing page explains the principles of the app (circles, privacy, etc) but it doesn't show how it works in practice. As someone who also abhors social media, how is this different from those experiences? How are the circles managed? How are my posts and f…

Thanks for all these comments, all noted. You're right, a demo would be nice and also super simple to do. Also a great point, as mentioned in the OP, I've been off social media for some time because I hated them. So bar the standard stuff of onboarding, posting a piece of content etc. We've pushed to do the exact opposite of a normal social media app. Some examples: - You must add someone to a Circle to see them in y…

Honestly if you have limited resources wouldn't a web app/PWA be a better option to give you faster turnaround on bug fixes and features, and a wider platform reach?

Personally I'm quite conservative about installing apps due to concerns about security, battery usage etc - the only social media apps I have on my phone are WhatsApp for family stuff and Twitter for casual scrolling. I'm happy to just jump into a web app and try it out though.

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#32

Post by spyke112 »

newswasboring wrote: post #22

I know its frowned upon in HN to talk monetization early, but if I am not the product, how do you plan to sustain and grow this? I believe social media inherently has only one product, social interactions. If you users are not being charged, they are the product. Do you plan to charge content creators? Do you plan to charge for premium features? I ask because otherwise it might just go the way of Google+ and disappea…

Same for me. I think it would be wise to think about monetization of these sort of apps before even writing code, and be up front about it towards potential customers (not users).

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#33

Post by fum52882 »

Hi, one of the co-founders of StoryArk (https://storyark.eu) here.

I really like your idea. We're building something similar with a focus on photo sharing.

Have you considered making the contact book upload an opt-in? We also thought about connecting our users via their phone book, but we chose a different approach as we're concerned about privacy.

If you make the contact book upload opt-in, you at least give the user the chance to try out the app before giving away the contact details of their whole phone book (without their permission).

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#34

Post by jstrafy »

jph wrote: post #12

Great work! Congratulations on launching. Here's feedback. I don't want to sync all my phone contacts because many are confidential; do you provide a workaround? I loved the circles concept on Google+, but many people said circles were too much overhead to create and maintain; how will your app be better? Your landing page and video emphasize one person's personal connections, whereas Instagram and similar social net…

Thanks! Love the feedback.

Good point and something we haven't experienced before. There definitely needs to be a workaround. We had manual search and add in a previous version so

The answer here is UX. Google+ UX was clunky at best, where their circles feature was essentially just an add on to the Facebook experience (which facebook then replicated through lists). On Circles, the whole app runs through Circles and we've focused the app entirely on the benefit of adding people to Circles and creating more intimate connections with people.

Great point. I think for influencer, B2C type accounts, for now people should definitely continue to use Instagram as its not something we're entertaining for now. However, the way WeChat (I lived in China for a while) splits personal and business connection is fantastic and something I think about a lot.

In time we'd love to explore the route of a hybrid interoperable chat (beeper.com and texts.com) and social app, where B2C accounts are relegated to a more minor part of the experience (90% real life connection, 10% other). This works amazingly in WeChat because the little communication they have incentivises B2C accounts to communicate with signal and also makes WeChat monetise beyond advertisements.

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#35

Post by katzeilla »

- your landing page says 'On Circles, your data is encrypted at rest. This means no ads or questionable business.', how does data being encrypted relate to 'no ads'?

- asking for contacts while saying nothing about how you monetize is a huge red flag to me

- since you are already using cross platform JS framework, how about making it available as a PWA? or maybe provide apk directly? google store doesn't cover a sizeable number of android devices

- your landing page still says 2021 in its footer

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#36

Post by shafyy »

This is the only social media app that peaked my interest in the past few years and I will definitely give it a go.

As others have asked, can you tell us more about your pricing strategy? I would rather that you start charging right away, so I know that a) this has a chance of surviving for a longer period of time and b) you won't fall back ot ads or the VC teat :-) Also, as you said, since it doesn't depend on dozens of my friends using it, I think it would be easier to convince a couple of my friends to start using and paying for it.

Another question is: I'm guessing your biggest competitor are WhatsApp/Signal/etc. group chats. Why is it better to use Circle instead of group chats (which are also often organized as circles of friends)?

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#38

Post by jstrafy »

empty_banana wrote: post #29

Congrats! Tell us about your software stack

Super simple, I didn't know how to code 18 months ago so when we started (was just I at that point), I stared building with what I could.

The front end is built with React Native (JS) as it provides a way for us to more or less maintain two OS with one codebase. It also is somewhat simple for us to convert out code for web with react-native-web. We do use a series of community build packages (more than I would like) but that's how its went for us early stage.

The back end is built with Rails as a simple API layer, keeps it simple to make models and controllers and build lightly with the focus on the architecture. Phone verification integrated through Twilio and we use Lockbox for at-rest encryption.

Hosted serverless on AWS EB (if going back I would stick to Heroku at least until this point and beyond).

As an experiment we also were building on top of the Matrix protocol (https://matrix.org/) with their Ruby SDK, but the cons outweighed the benefits in the end. Would love to figure out a solution here, and love the idea of interoperability championed by products like beeper.com.

Overall, I think that React/React Native and Rails is a good stack for hacking MVPs and would recommend.

Re: Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?

#40

Post by chrisco255 »

jstrafy wrote: post #25
chrisco255 wrote: post #14

Great work on the app! I haven't used it yet, as I'm reluctant to download an app or even sign up for an app without a clear demo of how it works. The video on the landing page explains the principles of the app (circles, privacy, etc) but it doesn't show how it works in practice. As someone who also abhors social media, how is this different from those experiences? How are the circles managed? How are my posts and f…

Thanks for all these comments, all noted. You're right, a demo would be nice and also super simple to do. Also a great point, as mentioned in the OP, I've been off social media for some time because I hated them. So bar the standard stuff of onboarding, posting a piece of content etc. We've pushed to do the exact opposite of a normal social media app. Some examples: - You must add someone to a Circle to see them in y…

I avoid downloading apps in general, but in particular social media apps because they make use of many dark UX patterns (notifications, location/data access requests, etc). I'd rather avoid altogether. So I browse reddit, twitter, facebook, instagram, etc from mobile web when I do use them. Your app may promise not to have or add those patterns, but I still won't use it if I don't have it as a fallback. I also spend a great deal of time on my laptop and need the option to use a desktop app or website in order to interact with a social media service.
Post reply on HN