This is so much fun! Thanks for making this!
Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#22I hope sites that just provide a way for people to assemble offline will be the new thing soon. A photography guide's site that rallies amateurs for walk tours. A planning board for a foreign language practice group. A site with a schedule and registration form for a sports event. When I read "online social" my head thinks "not-really social".
I'm working on a game that helps with this. You leave your little bunker in a post-apocalyptic world and find the land around you contaminated. You walk, run, any workout, to claim territory around you, and gain energy you can use to clean up. You start building greenhouses to grow food and start rebuilding the ecosystem. It's all on the real world map underneath you, and all the interactions between people in the game are cooperative: you get more benefits helping another player with most actions than doing the same thing in your own territory.
The game tricks you into going for walks or runs regularly since you need those energy points for everything, and I'm building out more cooperative behaviors to give you reasons to go walk with someone else, go work together to fight an alien infestation, and more. You'll discover other players in the game who are near you in the physical world, and be able to request help, thank them, give them benefits, all positive.
I've learned a lot from Niantic's strategy, but they've never leaned into actually helping people improve their fitness, or work out together. I'm hoping I can help solve this problem you're talking about, at least for getting people fitter!
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm actually thinking about implementing some sort of "permanence" for some people, specially for recurring visitors of a given site. But that's still an early thought.
Would that be a little guy permanently on the page even if the user isn’t present, or a permanent persona for a user across visits?
A permanent persona for a user across visits.
Could even be across website visits, if they all use townsquare.
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#24This is so much fun! Thanks for making this!
You are welcome!
My hope was that people had fun and had interesting conversation.
The second part only happens after the HN spike...ehhehe
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#25I love it, and I just want to say thanks for making this and releasing it. I jumped through the indieweb webring and already stumbled onto another site using it too. Despite what some others have said about the lack of permanence, this still feels like an old web treasure to me even if it didn't exist.
thanks for that message!
I made this for the community and this type of response makes me super happy!
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the site author and creator of TownSquare. The only moment it got a bit abused it was during the first HN spike. But before and after that, everything was friendly.
I think there might be some merit to a basic filter, perhaps some sort of timeout for obvious slurs. I see a few right now.
This is already sort of implemented.
But moderation is a very very difficult problem to be solved and there are different philosophies for it...
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#27I hope sites that just provide a way for people to assemble offline will be the new thing soon. A photography guide's site that rallies amateurs for walk tours. A planning board for a foreign language practice group. A site with a schedule and registration form for a sports event. When I read "online social" my head thinks "not-really social".
If you’re into running, cycling, etc. Strava can easily function in this way and does. I’ve made a bunch of friends and been introduced to groups and routes through my interaction with initial strangers
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#28I hope sites that just provide a way for people to assemble offline will be the new thing soon. A photography guide's site that rallies amateurs for walk tours. A planning board for a foreign language practice group. A site with a schedule and registration form for a sports event. When I read "online social" my head thinks "not-really social".
Yeah, the internet was originally an extension of the real world, and it probably should have stayed that way.
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#29This is awesome
thaaanks :)
Re: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
#30took a spin, pretty cool. Does it record convos? As a site owner, I would want to know what people were chatting up. As a web surfer, I like the anonymity of it.