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saghm 1 days ago [-]
> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin.
> So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of the domain name friendster.com.
I don't know anything about how to project future ad revenue of a domain, but would this be likely to be valued at only $10,000? Unless I'm misremembering my limits, even if it made $4,500 next year and continued to cut in half every year after that, it would still account for $9,000 of revenue projecting indefinitely into the future, even bumping that up to something like 60% of the previous year's revenue it would already put it at more than $10,000 (although I don't know whether ad revenue tends to scale with inflation or not; my instinct is that the prices of ads probably would roughly increase with inflation over time)?
I know I'm nitpicking a bit about the title, but I can't help but actually be curious now that I thought of this.
julianeon 21 hours ago [-]
You are absolutely right and that jumped out at me. I should also point out the obvious: if people were selling online assets making $9k/year for $9k, there would be a line out the door of people lining up to buy them. If anyone here is selling an asset that makes $X a year for $X, I'll buy it! I make my money back in 12 months and everything else is profit.<p>So let's value it as it would be valued on, say, Flippa, a decent proxy for "the market." We would look at the monthly revenue: in this case, around $750/mo (which is 9k divided by 12). Then we'd do a multiple of the monthly revenue: 20 is low, 40 is normal. I would actually say 30 here, because this guy created the asset and I would bet he did it well and it's not junk. So let's say it's worth $22.5k.
So I think it would be more accurate to say, "I purchased the site in a deal through assets valued at about $42k, total."
[edit: updated the comment as I got confused about the thing being exchanged - it's a site the guy created that he transferred to make the sale]
ipaddr 11 hours ago [-]
There are tons of those offers. Carefull that 9k revenue doesn't come from $9000 of ads.
timr 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but you have to scale the projections for uncertainty about the future, and exaggeration by the seller.
In particular, if someone on the internet tells me they’re making $x a month from spammy ads on a squatted domain, I immediately discount the claim substantially due to bullshit. I increase the discount rate if the person making the claim is trying to sell me said domain.
julianeon 21 hours ago [-]
True, but if the guy contacting you is the actual owner of the website you use to buy domains, his credibility increases enormously. He said this person was a customer on his platform. When that guy says "I have a website which is making 10k/year," and I already trust the domain platform he created because I use it as a customer, I believe him.
thrownthatway 15 hours ago [-]
> I believe him.
Enough to be motivated to proceed with due diligence.
Whatever any potential buyer considers that to mean for them.
timr 15 hours ago [-]
You really think the owner of the marketplace doesn’t have an incentive to convince you to make a sizable transaction?
vel0city 20 hours ago [-]
Projected revenues for this domain is at $100k this year!
How much are you trying to sell the domain for?
Uhh...about $100k.
elphinstone 10 hours ago [-]
I doubt gray market sites have any kind of longterm value or predictable revenues. Who knows what kind of site it was, but to be valued so lowly the regulatory risk might be very high.
ufocia 3 hours ago [-]
To "get your money back" you would actually need to get $x+risk free interest (or maybe + inflation rate), no?
wongarsu 1 days ago [-]
If you had a steady investment opportunity with 10% return (about in line with long-terms stock market returns), $9000 per year indefinitely is worth the same as $99000 now (in an idealized finance world. In the real world you can't invest $99000 and withdraw $9000 per year because withdrawals during downturns will take out too much. But it's a quick way to calculate equivalent values).
That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)
Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford
mogrinz 10 hours ago [-]
I have a calendaring site (won't mention it here b/c I don't want to be seen as plugging it) that has been generating revenue from ads and subscriptions for 26 years now. At its peak, well over 100k/yr but now more like 15k/yr for the past 5 years. Still a very steady income b/c the site is sticky. The only expense I have is about $3k every 36/mo for VPS hosting. At this point the code base is so mature that I only do minimal user support. I've looked into selling but people only want to offer 2x annual revenue. Why would I do that when I can just hold onto it for another year? I wish more people saw the math your way.
55555 9 hours ago [-]
The main reason this is an issue is that it's a lemon market. Many sellers claim their sites will require "no time to maintain" and that future returns will likely continue, but it's often a lie and thus you don't get the multiple that is truly justified. Even without lies, no one knows the truth of your business like you do. The unfortunate result of this -- and I've been in a similar position in the past -- is that you are incentivized to lazily run things into the ground slowly rather than find a new owner who may bring new passion.
cestith 8 hours ago [-]
I would have several questions before negotiating seriously, and I could actually be in the market for such a beast.
At what multiple would you be comfortable considering selling? If revenue has dropped 85% from its peak, have you identified the cause of the drop? Has it been steady that past five years? Do you have a record of the time spent on it, or does it just feel minimal? How much of revenue is from ads vs subscriptions? Is it sticky mainly because a user can’t export things and import them to Google Calendar or something?
Is it custom software, heavily customized software, or are you basically selling the calendaring component of something like Citadel or Horde? What languages are in use? Does the buyer get just the site or full ownership of the codebase and the rights to derive new products and services from it? Does it come with the domain and trademarks?
Are you selling outright, or are you reserving some royalty for yourself?
What does the handover look like? Does the buyer just get an email with URLs and login credentials, or do you plan on familiarizing a buyer with the whole thing?
mogrinz 6 hours ago [-]
The site is localendar.com (you can reach me through the Contact Form there and I can share more financials). Short version: I started back in '99. There were no good calendaring engines back then so I had to build my own (with wicked performance btw ;)). The site is Java/SQL Server. It's sticky b/c it targeted webmasters who needed an easy-to-update calendar for their own site.
The original goal was to aggregate all these local events into a single searchable index and serve up local ads alongside. I never really got that part to take off, though I did get a very early patent for local search on the web. Since then, calendaring libs have come along which allowed many site-builder tools to offer a built-in solution.
The primary reasons for declines are 0) Not as many people build raw sites anymore; people migrate to things like Wordpress or Wix) 1) Google showing less profitable ads and 2) Webmasters w/ a popular site can remove ads via a subscription (which are drastically underpriced; some are still on a legacy $9.95/year). Everything is exportable (and importable) via iCal if desired. Buyer gets everything, w/ no residual royalties to me. I'd have to have an active role in the handover since it's all bespoke code. The buyer would need some level of Java+T-SQL since I don't want to teach coding from scratch.
I love my users and many rely heavily on the site - it's meant to be very simple to use and I tend to draw an older demographic that doesn't need a lot of fancy bells and whistles. 26+ years is a lot of time and I don't have the passion for it I used to. I had a recent health issue and my wife is concerned that she wouldn't know how to close this out gracefully if the worst ever happened.
killingtime74 1 days ago [-]
Good analysis. if I was the author I would have just borrowed 20k in a personal loan and paid it off in three years. Of course he may be exaggerating that he gets 9K in Ad revenue per year or he knows that it's going to decline
plumeria 22 hours ago [-]
What's the best network currently to put a domain to generate ad revenue?
aarreedd 16 hours ago [-]
Adsense
someonenice 15 hours ago [-]
Doesn't Adsense require website with proper Content ?
technion 15 hours ago [-]
Yes this is what im confused about. They described it as a parking domain, but the old strategy of "buy a popular domain and put ads on a one pager" hasn't been something that pays substantively for a long time. Ads sales have plummeted in general but not being able to use adsense would make it worse.
pknerd 15 hours ago [-]
Yes
QuantumNomad_ 1 days ago [-]
I imagine that $9k ad revenue is a site that had an actual user base. And that the guy taking over the domain is going to just put all ads and no content, like he had on Friendster.com. And if so, the expected ad income is probably much lower.
prettyblocks 1 days ago [-]
I believe it's 9k/year in parking revenue.
wileydragonfly 21 hours ago [-]
Nobody gets 10% a year
sarchertech 12 hours ago [-]
S&P 500 average return over the last 5, 10, 50, and 100 years was higher than that.
bell-cot 13 hours ago [-]
...unless there's considerable uncertainty about future payments. Happily for the sellers of dubious assets, the world never seems to run out of people who can't resist a deal that's too good to be true.
chillfox 22 hours ago [-]
From what I can tell, The upper bound on price for any site making less than 100k a month is 24 months of revenue, but the more common is around 12 months.
The buyer takes on substantial risk because it's easy to fake the numbers, and google updates can tank the site at any time.
Also, most sites will require maintenance/upkeep to keep earning, or they can tank quick. Even if they have got evergreen content, without updates google might drop their search ranking.
julianeon 21 hours ago [-]
I see it more as 20-40 on Flippa. Where are you seeing 12x monthly revenue sales?
chillfox 21 hours ago [-]
it's been a few years since I looked into it, but the 12x-24x was the range I saw for sites that actually sold. I guess it might have changed since then.
soared 1 days ago [-]
You can check out similar sales on flippa.com - ad revenue does not last forever, even if it’s existed for years. And revenue is very much not profit, you could create a site and get $100/day in ad revenue tomorrow but it would cost you $200 in ad spend.
eucyclos 17 hours ago [-]
What does the spend go to, besides hosting costs?
thrownthatway 15 hours ago [-]
Advertising costs, to drive traffic to your site(s).
xorcist 10 hours ago [-]
So, spam?
thrownthatway 10 hours ago [-]
Surely generating spam has a cost.
You can’t just send tens of thousands of emails via your typical email service.
ertgbnm 10 hours ago [-]
Well did they sell the website too? Or just the domain? Because the domain doesn't generate ad revenue, the original website did. Like just because I sell the domain name for my blog doesn't mean you also get the content of my blog too.
Someone 13 hours ago [-]
They said “a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue”, not “a domain that was making about $9k/year in profits”.
Also, even if it were making about $9k/year in profits, if that comes with large costs (be it labor or dollars), it still might not be worth it. Let’s say it costs $100k a year to keep that site making $9k in profits. That would be 9% return on investment. Good but not spectacular. Add in uncertainty about whether that site will keep doing that, and I can see such a domain not being worth much.
fluoridation 12 hours ago [-]
>Let’s say it costs $100k a year to keep that site making $9k in profits. That would be 9% return on investment. Good but not spectacular.
That's not investment, that's just the cost of upkeep. It's possible you simply cannot afford to keep up with that expense rate, but the fact remains that it's net profit. With a $100k investment and a yearly $9k profit, if you stop at the first year you lost $91k. With a yearly $100k cost and a yearly $9k profit, if you stop at the first year you earned $9k. No matter how you slice it it's a money-printing machine. The question is much it cost you to buy the machine, not how much it costs you to run it, because you'd be a fool to turn it off.
andy_ppp 14 hours ago [-]
If Friendster.com was making around $9,000 per year, this would explain why paying $30k + domains returning a similar amount would make sense?
treatmesubj 10 hours ago [-]
discounted cash flows - DCF
QuantumNomad_ 1 days ago [-]
I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook, and at that point I stopped scrolling the results.
For a moment I thought maybe the app was US exclusive or something and not available in my region.
But following the link from the post worked fine and I could install it.
I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
Anyway, installed the app finally thanks to the link.
When a new app is released, it takes a few days for it to get into search, for some reason. Pretty much every single time a new app releases I see a comment like this. Nothing malicious you just have to wait a bit.
TheDong 16 hours ago [-]
> Nothing malicious
The first result is a sponsored result, and even after Friendster is indexed, if they don't pay apple's extortion-rate, the first result will still be for some other social media app.
Ads in the app store are malicious. There are people who have searched "Ledger bitcoin wallet", clicked the first link (a malicious app who paid apple enough money to be 'sponsored' for that search), and had all their money stolen.
hiccuphippo 12 hours ago [-]
Well they are domain squatters so they known how this extortion business works.
mapt 12 hours ago [-]
I think it's a warranted attitude to take a failure to implement plaintext search as part of your text search algorithm as enemy action. Yesterday I ended up at Bing for some reason and typed in the unique name of the site I was looking for and it didn't even come up in the first page; All their competitors did, as well as a couple random SEO farms. This is enshittification to the point of unusability, for an application space that we solved in the mid 90's.
My workplace does this to our customers too, where you get worse-than-plaintext-search effectiveness, and I guess it must be profitable enough conning the customer to waste our time as well, as we use the same interface for a lot of customer questions.
mghackerlady 10 hours ago [-]
We need a FOSS nonprofit search engine that works like 2000s google
mapt 8 hours ago [-]
Arguably we need half a dozen operating on adjacent principles, to fight against engine-specific SEO exploits.
"SEO is a $100 billion industry" = your opponents have a 12 figure war budget.
awesome_dude 4 hours ago [-]
This is what killed search more than anything else - people actively working to get their results higher than they would have been under "normal" conditions.
paulddraper 22 hours ago [-]
Agreed.
You can search apps by their exact name, identifier, anything, and App Store will not find them for day+.
tantalor 21 hours ago [-]
Bookmarking this for the next time somebody claims Apple makes great software.
hnav 20 hours ago [-]
nobody has ever claimed that apple makes great cloud software, but all of their walled garden gate-keeping aside, they’re still the last bastion of mainstream local-first computing
TheDong 16 hours ago [-]
Yeah, sure. How do I sync my iCloud photos to my local NAS on linux? A: use a third-party app, they don't build their own.
How do I build an app for my iPhone locally and run it without ever connecting to their servers? I can do that for my phone running linux or for my phone running android, but on iOS I have to get signed by their servers to run code I wrote.
Linux respects my freedom to have my data exist locally, to build and run open source apps, and to modify the code on the devices I run.
Apple does not. They don't let me use their ecosystem from Linux, they do not let me patch the iOS kernel and run a modified version on the devices I run, I can't even access the source code for the macOS kernel.
Apple's filesystem abstraction and lack of something like android "intents" also makes it wildly difficult to do "local-first" computing where files are shared between apps cleanly.
pintxo 14 hours ago [-]
You missed the "mainstream" qualifier from the parent. I am afraid nothing you described here could be considered mainstream, although I'd like to see these things becoming mainstream.
zakki 13 hours ago [-]
I can see there are a lot of T&C for their claim on "Apple makes great software."
paulddraper 9 hours ago [-]
Is the claim in the thread with us?
paulddraper 9 hours ago [-]
FWIW I’ve never heard that claim.
People like iPhones and MacBooks, not Pages or Numbers.
mikestew 1 days ago [-]
Odd, Friendster was the first non-sponsored result for me in the U.S. store.
mschuster91 12 hours ago [-]
> I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
App Store search is fucked. Hilariously, Apple is at least non-discriminatory - try searching for any Apple app, and they will also be (at best) in the second slot after "sponsored" crap.
chneu 9 hours ago [-]
The android app store is no better. Anytime one searches, 3/4 of the results are sponsored apps/ads. It's so annoying.
Rekindle8090 6 hours ago [-]
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vector_spaces 24 hours ago [-]
The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.
Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site
If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.
See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"
SamBam 21 hours ago [-]
I think the tapping phones feature -- for initial friend creation, not upkeep -- is THE killer feature of the app.
Do I want my teens on any social media apps? No.
Would I let them be on Facebook of 2006, when you were just connected to your friends and family, and not influencers and "the algorithm?" Sure! That and early Instagram were great ways to keep up with real-life friends.
If you made this as easy and pleasant to scroll through as 2011 Instagram was, with only-real friends allowed, I might even return to social media myself. It would beat having to WhatsApp my family my vacation photos.
(And heck, if this got big enough that celebrities were bumping phones with fans, heck, at least that's a more intentional connection than Insta forcing the latest wellness guru on my teen girl.)
ineptech 18 hours ago [-]
It also doubles as a way to verify that someone is a real person using their real identity, which is starting to become pretty important these days. If Alice and Bob are both on this platform, the confidence Alice can have in the proposition "the Bob account is really controlled by a guy named Bob who really knows some people I know, as opposed to being AI or an overseas scammer" would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them. That sounds useful.
dgellow 14 hours ago [-]
I’m not convinced that’s the case. A relatively small subset of bad actors can join the network, create new accounts on a second phone, tap (or find a way to fake that process via the API), then eventually use those accounts from bots.
It’s of course more friction, which in itself is good to avoid spam/bots, but over time all of that can very likely be automated
palijer 12 hours ago [-]
Bots don't matter if you aren't connected to accounts you haven't tapped phones with though.
buggymcbugfix 14 hours ago [-]
I think this point is crucial:
> [...] would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them.
lopis 12 hours ago [-]
There's a German gay social/dating app called Romeo that has a feature where you can show which people you know personally. There's no physical validation though, so it's easy to fake.
jdyer9 18 hours ago [-]
My thoughts as well, I love this!
Easy to do, easy to implement but hard to bypass.
Also it tells me something about the network that is not vying for a slice of the attention economy and isn't going to do everything it can to keep me on the site.
Bengalilol 10 hours ago [-]
Why "hard to bypass" would be a sufficient thing?
It depends on the technology used to connect the two phones. Bypassing this process can range from "easy" to "quite complicated", but it remains possible. Once the security is compromised, the entire network loses its core value since a single interaction is enough to establish a permanent connection.
coryfklein 10 hours ago [-]
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darkwater 17 hours ago [-]
Don't underestimate the stubbornness of "get rich easy" people when it comes down to cheating etc. Even if it's not easy or cost effective, if this was going to be actually viral, they would tap real phones in click-farms to game the system. And do it once a year.
vintermann 14 hours ago [-]
It's true that there are people who pay a premium for thinking they got one up on you, and will waste $1000 of effort to get $100.
But it wouldn't actually work well. It doesn't even need physical invites, keeping track of the invite graph is a great way to kick scammers out. It works. It's been demonstrated to work well since at least 2004.
The reason social media sites don't do it is not that it doesn't work - it's that growth trumps those concerns. Making onboarding as easy as possible is more important than keeping scammers out.
schipperai 13 hours ago [-]
100%. The exclusivity of the network is the differentiator here.
metabagel 9 hours ago [-]
I share vacation photos using Polarsteps. It’s quite nice.
dgellow 15 hours ago [-]
> The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing
Optimizing for time spent on the platform is exactly what results in the current social platforms. The idea that the platform itself should be appealing and not a tool to connect with each others is in itself toxic IMHO
moondance 16 hours ago [-]
As others have mentioned, “Bump!” did it 15 years ago and it was little more than a novelty, despite its Google acquisition. iOS has also had the tapping-phones-to-connect feature baked in for years (NameDrop) and no one uses it. Curious how that OS-level functionality might conflict with the app-level bumping. That aside, w all respect to the poster, it strikes me that they took that comment and ran with it before doing any research. There’s definitely a better solution to the problem, and I hope they find it.
ghostly_s 10 hours ago [-]
> iOS has also had the tapping-phones-to-connect feature baked in for years (NameDrop)
Well that's just because I have no idea how to find it. The "share contact?" prompt when you text a new number accomplishes the same I guess but it would be nice to skip the number part.
kristopherleads 13 hours ago [-]
Funnily enough, I only use the phone bumping feature when AirDrop is broken and won't detect I'm literally right next to my spouse.
karel-3d 13 hours ago [-]
I have used NameDrop about 4-5 times (in 10-ish years of using iPhone). It's not nothing! But it's also not that much.
spiralcoaster 20 hours ago [-]
You're right. I don't think I could continue living if one of my friends died and a I could no longer view their social media profile on a site designed to foster in person connections. I really can't think many things worse than this.
delis-thumbs-7e 16 hours ago [-]
You are saying you would kill yourself if you could not see you dead friend on some app? On the contrary it should be easy for a relative to remove a deceased individual from social media, especially so that they are not captured to be zombie-bots liking some far-right posts years they have been gone. Meta doesn’t give a shit about this, but tapping phones would actually solve this problem by itself. If you are not online nor tap phones with anyone for say a year, your account dissappears.
KolmogorovComp 12 hours ago [-]
You missed the tongue-in-cheek.
xp84 18 hours ago [-]
If that happens, just steal their phone and keep tapping it monthly. It's what they would have wanted.
rahkiin 14 hours ago [-]
Once this is actually needed, they can add a feature for marking someone as deceased. It could freeze the relationships, disallow new ones, disallow any new content, mark person as dead.
jamespo 14 hours ago [-]
I think you meant this snark for reddit?
__d 18 hours ago [-]
I have a heap of family and friends who live in a different country to me. I'd love an old school Friendster / early Facebook-style social medium where we could share posts, but the tapping mechanic makes this impractical for me.
j3th9n 17 hours ago [-]
Maybe pay them a visit.
filleduchaos 10 hours ago [-]
Maybe "get up and travel to a different country" is not as simple as it sounds.
lossyalgo 2 hours ago [-]
Feature request: friend-request-by-mail: Pay Friendster $1 to send a postcard with a unique QR code. I've seen something similar for user/address verification on a local community website (but it's free to send the postcard).
lossyalgo 2 hours ago [-]
"Hey I'm coming to visit you so we can be friends on Friendster 2.0! The flight was 1k so I hope you don't mind if I crash on your couch!"
Broken_Hippo 12 hours ago [-]
I shouldn't require international travel - over an ocean - to talk to my siblings on the internet on a social app.
Visits are great and all, but they require money and planning with more than one person. And I'm lucky - I can travel. Some folks can't go home - war sucks, poverty sucks, sickness sucks, busy work times suck, etc. If I were still in the US, I might not even get a chunk of time off work.
Travel is probably getting a little less likely considering the current situation with jet fuel as well.
skybrian 24 hours ago [-]
Perhaps "remember when you met with your friends?"
But taking a photo (possibly a group photo) is a more natural way to do that. Maybe it should integrate with photo-taking somehow?
It would be annoying if you met up, forgot to do the ritual in person, and had no way to fix it.
lossyalgo 2 hours ago [-]
How about "friend-request-by-mail" where you pay Friendster a token amount to send a postcard with a unique QR code?
al_borland 23 hours ago [-]
While this probably could only be done with the cooperation of Apple/Google, something like what they did for contact tracing during the pandemic would be ideal. Picking up that you were in the proximity of various friends without any active effort.
That sounds creepy to me. Taking a photo together doesn't seem like friction to be removed?
al_borland 21 hours ago [-]
Doing it via a photo implies facial recognition, which can potentially be more creepy for people. Is it happening on device or in the cloud? Do I need to register my face when joining the service? What happens to that data if the service is sold at some point in the future?
skybrian 21 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't use facial recognition. The idea would be that you take the group photo and share it with everyone using the phone-bumping ritual, and it shows up in your profiles.
But that only works if the social network has enough privacy safeguards that sharing personal photos on it makes sense. Maybe the network just shares the photos encrypted?
And if you can't share photos with your friends on it, it seems kind of limited as social networks go?
resident423 22 hours ago [-]
I don't really like the idea of an app telling me how to manage my friendships, my view is that people can handle their relationships without intervention. I'm not sure what problem it is trying to solve.
dgellow 14 hours ago [-]
It gives you one way to experience your friendship. It’s not telling you how you should manage them. You can use it for just a few friends. Or ignore it completely
14 hours ago [-]
hbn 10 hours ago [-]
I don't see the issue with making a social network that's more focused on real-time, current irl connections. Snapchat has already used a similar model with decaying content to great success.
I think you're likely of a generation that's attached to the Facebook model where a social network is an ever-growing photobook/history of interactions with all your friends. Maybe that has a place, but I think it's worth being open to other ideas. And yes, maybe when someone dies, they're no longer part of this network in the same way they are no longer part of many other things in your life. I don't think that's inherently bad.
vector_spaces 3 hours ago [-]
You move to dismiss what I have to say by framing me as closed to new ideas because of how you infer my age, in a roundabout way -- what an ugly, uncouth, and mean-spirited rhetorical move.
Either way, you badly mischaracterize generational differences in grieving and digital life. Gen Z and younger millenials are vastly more inclined towards memorialization of deceased loved ones and (physically & digitally) archiving their content than any generation. See also the uptrending of stated preference in burials over cremations in the same generation. There are many reasons for this but at least in part it is probably a reaction to the ephemeralization of both digital and physical life.
Also, my post was largely motivated by how OP brands their product. From their app store page and the blog post, it seems they will support photos, longer form content, and DMs. In such a setting, ephemerality needs to be in your face, otherwise you are setting up users for unpleasant surprises. It's common sense.
Elucalidavah 18 hours ago [-]
> 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore
That 'tapping phones' could also be used to facilitate key exchange verification, making that chore technically useful.
Then again, that would be better done in an open-source app and not tied to any particular domain.
jasonkester 18 hours ago [-]
It’s interesting to read the comments here. People seem to be either strongly for, or strongly against this tapping feature. I bet the split correlates to whether all your friends live in the same town as you.
For me, I already know what the handful of people who live in my little town are doing. I see them all the time. An app like this is for keeping up for the rest of my friends who live out of town and I might only see in person every few years.
kube-system 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's an unintended side-effect. The entire point is to mimic the dynamics of in-person interaction.
munificent 7 hours ago [-]
> an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.
You could say the same thing about leaving the house.
Maybe we should have a little more of this annoying but ultimately healthy kind of friction in our lives.
incompatible 21 hours ago [-]
How does it work? Bluetooth?
m-i-l 13 hours ago [-]
I'd imagine Friendster uses NFC. I developed a proof of concept of a tap-to-connect social network a couple of years ago which used NFC - on both phones you had to have the app open and press a button in the app to put it in both broadcast and receive mode, which seems like what is shown here. Some notes:
- It had to be an app because the web NFC API[0] only allows a browser to act as an NFC reader rather than emulate an NFC card. Nothing stopping other functionality outside of the tap-to-connect working in a browser of course.
- Permissions to act as an NFC card were fairly easy to set up on Android, but needed specific developer permissions for Apple[1], which had to be applied for[2][3].
Worth also noting that other proximity techniques such as QR scanning and geolocation are much more easily spoofed than NFC, making them much less useful as a proof-of-human validation.
There's a comment below, "I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing."
I suppose getting special "NFC card" permissions when they already struggled to get the app in the store would have been a bit much.
paulnpace 23 hours ago [-]
> I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.
modo_mario 16 hours ago [-]
People just shouldn't look to the online digital world for connection with dead loved ones. It's entirely impractical and one day after a bankruptcy or when it's no longer profitable it may just disappear. It can take years or weeks.
card_zero 22 hours ago [-]
Much bullying potential. "You're dead to us" ...
DeathArrow 17 hours ago [-]
Actually I met people on Facebook and other websites and after that I met them in real life.
The tapping phones feature wouldn't allow me to do this.
mjamesaustin 1 days ago [-]
This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends.
I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a friend so they can take a photo and then download it, and immediately connect us, would be huge.
Do you have any kind of development plan for new features?
collinmcnulty 1 days ago [-]
I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing.
mjamesaustin 24 hours ago [-]
What I was describing is a way to quickly onboard a friend who I want to friend, because chances are zero of my friends will have this app yet.
If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.
macintux 24 hours ago [-]
> allow Bluetooth
I'd have a hard time getting over my aversion to this. I automatically reject any app's attempt to find local devices, etc.
collinmcnulty 23 hours ago [-]
I can't imagine how it would be possible to detect a phone in close proximity without allowing this though
mkl 22 hours ago [-]
Accelerometer, by putting the two phones together and shaking (some app used to do this, but I can't find it with a quick search). Edit: I might have been thinking of Bump, mentioned downthread, though it's a different physical mechanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
Camera, and point it at their changing screen (or both at the same scene at the same moment). Not too intrusive.
GPS, but that would require location permission. Intrusive.
Audio, but that would require allowing microphone. Intrusive.
jaggederest 19 hours ago [-]
slightly OT but the technology behind Bump was genuinely mindblowing at the time. Phones didn't have NFC or anything like that, and they didn't use much accuracy in the way of location data, so they basically just had a general "city block" location, timestamp, and accelerometer readings and would invert the accelerometer reading and look for identical accel + timestamp.
We tested it one time with like 10 phones and everyone bumping each other / the wall as a control, in the same room and it nailed every actual pairing and ignored the others. The wiki has more, but lacks the subjective experience of how magic it was.
bjt 6 hours ago [-]
That's what Bump did, like 13 years ago, by sending accelerometer and GPS data up to the cloud and correlating it there.
It works in isolation and fails miserably when trying to do a big demo of it in a conference talk when attempted by dozens of people in the same room.
A guy bought friendster.com for $30k and built an app where you can only add friends by physically tapping phones. Connections "fade" if you don't meet in a year. Sounds wholesome. Also sounds like a feature set that filters out 90% of the people who'd actually use a social network
selektionkey 7 hours ago [-]
It reads as "cute" but not sure the actual utility other than adding an unneeded digital layer to friendship lol
chr15m 1 days ago [-]
Here's what I would do.
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
Cool project. Have fun!
JimDabell 16 hours ago [-]
> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a quarter of the time, and PWA about 10% of the time. That’s across all users, including desktop, so the PWA actually had an unfair advantage.
People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs, especially for social media.
pbasista 13 hours ago [-]
> People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs
Such a conclusion cannot reasonably be made from the data you have presented. It merely means that your web app was not preferred over your native app.
postalrat 9 hours ago [-]
Could it be you are pushing your native app? Maybe for more control to advertising in your app, tracking, etc. Keep those nasty ad blockers out.
kube-system 8 hours ago [-]
It's probably just because social media consumption looks like this today:
A user on a app is more valuable since you get a lot more data on them, and can stop their ad blockers.
kube-system 8 hours ago [-]
But people are used to that now being the normal state of things, it's rare that they even try the browser -- I develop an application that is web only and typically used on desktops, and people incessantly ask me for "an app so they can use it on their phone".
postalrat 6 hours ago [-]
They probably want an icon to open your app. They probably dont know the difference between an app rendered with a browser or a truly native app. In the past apple as made it difficult for users to know how to do this and users just know about the app store. Great for apple (walled garden) and social media apps (more tracking, unlimited ads) but not great for users.
kube-system 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, that's the "workaround" I use but by default people are expecting to find something in the app store.
> They probably dont know the difference between an app rendered with a browser or a truly native app.
Absolutely, users do not know or care what technology you are using so long as it meets their expectations of use. Users are going to the app store as a discovery mechanism for "something that gives them an icon on the phone to get to that thing", most have no clue what "native code" means.
13 hours ago [-]
weird-eye-issue 23 hours ago [-]
If somebody wouldn't even bother to download an app for a social network they probably wouldn't stick around for very long either
probably_wrong 15 hours ago [-]
What about the opposite situation? I'm not installing an app without first having taken a look at what the network has to offer.
weird-eye-issue 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, of course some people will feel that way, but also having less friction is not always necessarily a good thing because it requires less of a time investment for the user to get started, so therefore they are actually more likely to just churn. It is a balance
derwiki 23 hours ago [-]
Nobody wants to install an app?
danilocesar 23 hours ago [-]
I always avoid apps if I can.
But yeah, that comment is a bit disconnected to majority of the population.
derwiki 20 hours ago [-]
I’m not saying that I disagree personally, but for most folks, installing an app does not cross any line in the sand
sgt 17 hours ago [-]
Granted, there's a lot of crap apps out there. But properly built apps are a world apart from your typical PWA's or web sites (or even really good ones)
Invictus0 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
albedoa 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
threecheese 23 hours ago [-]
We’re not normies, so take that with a grain of salt. Here’s mine: apps have access to significantly expanded capabilities which has privacy implications. If I can use the browser for a given app, I do it. Amazon for example.
ChrisMarshallNY 22 hours ago [-]
As a native app writer, this has been my experience.
Mentioning it here, though, tends to get pushback from folks that write Web apps. They don’t want to admit that native apps have more capabilities than Web apps; even if that’s a bad thing, because of security risks.
ripped_britches 23 hours ago [-]
lol I was going to say this too! I think the inverse is true: nobody wants to install a PWA
numpad0 15 hours ago [-]
People say PWAs are good as apps now and feels like an app now, personally as ab armchair nobody I doubt the retention rate actually compare, even if the app was literally just a plain WebView.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
Personally I'll only install FOSS apps on my phone and I go out of my way to actively discourage (to varying degrees of success) my relatives from installing arbitrary junk that they surely don't need on their phones.
opan 16 hours ago [-]
Same here, if it's on F-Droid I'll install it, otherwise I'm using the mobile site on my browser.
stingraycharles 23 hours ago [-]
Yeah that’s a weird comment. I don’t want a PWA. I want a normal app. Users want apps.
retired 23 hours ago [-]
I have a handful of 3rd party apps on my phone and none on my computer. Prefer to just use browser.
paulnpace 23 hours ago [-]
If it requires Play Store, I will only put it on my work phone.
That’s empirically wrong. All statistics say that people do install apps way more than PWA
postalrat 9 hours ago [-]
Do you install a hacker news app?
dgellow 5 hours ago [-]
No, and I’m aware I’m part of the minority that will go pretty far to avoid installing mobile apps
thepasch 23 hours ago [-]
> 1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
Misses the point completely. The entire idea is that this enforces in-person meetings, which QR codes do not.
stkdump 22 hours ago [-]
You could make the qr code extremely short lived, like 2 seconds or so.
navigate8310 21 hours ago [-]
one could video call and scan
Happily2020 16 hours ago [-]
If one is going through the hassle of joining a video call on a different device to then scan it with their smartphone, all to just connect with another person, you could reasonably assume that they're friends.
Maybe if there's a "celebrity" that displays it on a live stream, that's a bigger issue, but there could be other mechanisms to dissuade this behaviour. Perhaps you could only add one friend with one QR code.
Zeebrommer 16 hours ago [-]
> You’d have to be specifically watching the domain friendster.com at the right time to find and participate in the auction, or you’d have to actively watch gname.com daily to see this auction.
You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
FinnKuhn 15 hours ago [-]
> You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
I looked into this a while ago and I'm pretty sure that there are hundreds of these services and even ones you can host yourself. No idea how well they work though.
dgellow 14 hours ago [-]
A domain being for sale can mean a lot of things. Here it meant it was auctioned on a very specific website
randomtoast 16 hours ago [-]
> You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
I guess in today's age you would just schedule an agent to check the website every day.
ryanjshaw 16 hours ago [-]
Geez who did you offend? Half your comments are dead for no obvious reason I can tell. Vouched for you but you may want to reach out to @dang.
Wouldn't that be rather inefficient, from a resource perspective?
Barbing 24 hours ago [-]
Wow, the phone tap requirement, love it! And your ethics, the best part.
Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):
Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)
Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.
Thank you for keeping it not evil!
Barbing 23 hours ago [-]
It’s almost unfair for me to say this, still registered on Meta properties… even need them for work… uhg!!! Zuck pls retire to do philanthropy & hire OP
vortegne 17 hours ago [-]
Let's not praise a professional domain squatter for his ethics. I don't understand how this guy isn't getting laughed out of the room?
readitalready 1 days ago [-]
I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant now. Same with other celebrities, like Kim Kardashian. If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
If you want a business model, require payment for long-term subscriptions or large celebrity/news accounts, but you have to overcome the network effect first. Maybe have a dozen or so permanent connections to start with, like MySpace's 8 priority friends.
giancarlostoro 1 days ago [-]
I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
Petersipoi 1 days ago [-]
I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
giancarlostoro 1 days ago [-]
> and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
You hit me right in the gut, are we long lost siblings? Lol
Aloha 23 hours ago [-]
Windows Phone was so so good - it was THE phone I recommended to users who were on feature phones/non-smart phones because the UX was so simple and clean (and obvious) - with a side effect that if you HAD a smart phone before (Palm, Apple, Android, BlackBerry, the UX was contrary to what you were used to).
Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel webOS was a lost opportunity too - in some ways it was just too ambitious for the hardware of its time.
caseysoftware 22 hours ago [-]
I loved the Windows Phone too.
I was one of two non-MSFT I knew of that had one.. and I bought it because an MSFT employee was showing it off and I was convinced. The concept of Tiles was great and Cortana was respectable. It felt comparable to Siri and way better than Google.
I used it for a couple years until the apps I needed started disappearing due to lack of updates.
indolering 23 hours ago [-]
I really wish I had messed with Windows Phone when it was a thing. They were the only ones not to just ship a clone of an existing interface ASAP. But it was closed source and offered no advantages for carriers or device makers compared to Android.
WebOS needed WASM and a lot more to be successful. I think WASM/WASI is to the point that the next major platform build out can use it.
Aloha 22 hours ago [-]
webOS was a bit ahead of its time - it does live on in LG TV's where its done quite well.
RajT88 23 hours ago [-]
I never tried a Windows phone - but everyone I knew with one loved them. (Most of the owners worked for Microsoft...)
I loved Google+ - it was like Facebook without the dark patterns. So of course, nobody was on it (which I didn't dislike exactly).
twelvedogs 24 hours ago [-]
i think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit
opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform
they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
aembleton 14 hours ago [-]
I had a few different circles depending on if friends were interested in running, cycling, hiking or computers and then I could make posts that could be just for specific groups.
segmondy 1 days ago [-]
Facebook has that feature and has for many years. That is a good idea, but there are many bad ideas that negate the good ideas even when the good ones are implemented.
Aloha 23 hours ago [-]
it goes back even further - LiveJournal, which was a social network like any other - more importantly without algorithmic optimization.
TulliusCicero 1 days ago [-]
It's a great idea in principle, but it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with.
JumpCrisscross 1 days ago [-]
> it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with
Dowsing a user's circles from their public information and Gmail inbox seems like a perfect task for AI.
echelon 1 days ago [-]
Exactly.
Self-defining all of the semantic grouping metadata was too much onus on the user.
Not everybody has the patience to curate and groom their social circle labels and memberships. That feels like a full time job.
I spent way too much time stressing over how to define my "circles". It was not a good experience.
lokar 1 days ago [-]
I don’t think it’s about the effort needed. The basic idea is just too complex for most people.
alpinisme 24 hours ago [-]
It would be easy to send a notification “you haven’t interacted with Sally in 6 months, so we’re removing her from your network. Click here to add her back” or something along those lines and nobody would be the least confused. They’d probably be annoyed often enough though.
jamesfinlayson 24 hours ago [-]
Apparently Facebook does/did support posting to certain groups? Maybe the UI isn't great as I never knew it was possible but a workmate told it was.
toast0 24 hours ago [-]
As I understand my FB account, I can easily post to a group. But I can't easily adjust the membership of that group. Otoh, I post maybe once a year, so who knows.
aembleton 14 hours ago [-]
You can but it's a very cumbersome UX.
mandeepj 23 hours ago [-]
> Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen.
Facebook now has 'Audience', which is quite analogous to 'Circles'
readitalready 1 days ago [-]
Messages group chats are the circles now.
pants2 1 days ago [-]
Also Discord - tons of people use Discord as a social network and keep up with friends. I must have 5 friend groups that have their own Discords with some overlap.
djyde 23 hours ago [-]
WeChat in China was early to implement friend group-based posting
boredatoms 23 hours ago [-]
Circles was a lot of busy work though
viccis 1 days ago [-]
What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.
acdha 23 hours ago [-]
It was worse than that: they forced _everyone_ into it, whether or not you had any interest in using it.
They did this before having notification control or usable filtering[1] so what this meant was for most of year, you'd login to Gmail and see the upper right notification badge be !!!LOOK AT ME!!! red only to click on it and see it was telling you that some dude who no-showed on a Craigslist sale 10 years ago in a different city had been forced to “join” Google+. Even worse, it took like 6 months for their iOS developers to give you any control over push notifications so you got all of that as push notifications until you deleted the app.
They also annoyed key communities like Google Reader users: that wasn't their largest popular social network but it was one which people actually liked and it disproportionately skewed towards people like journalists, bloggers, etc. who recommended technology to other people. The conversion to Google+ was really clumsy and they did things like replacing the popular Reader commenting system with a Google+ “integration” which didn't work at all on mobile devices[2], which meant that a ton of influential people had a really negative experience and told everyone they knew about it.
1. The “circles” idea reportedly worked well when it was Google employees using it internally but it relied on the poster picking an audience for a post, which failed in the real world when the spammiest people think everyone is interested in their every word.
2. The dialog was sized for a desktop display so the post button was inaccessible off the screen.
onemoresoop 1 days ago [-]
Thats not the only thing that killed google+ though. I think their aggressive push was their demise, forced all their users to use google+, mangled with youtube and gmail accounts and all that pissed off a lot of users.
echelon 1 days ago [-]
> the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good.
That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political.
X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off.
I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network complaining about politics, polarized attacks, etc.
viccis 23 hours ago [-]
Bluesky is political because their invite-only on-boarding process for months meant that only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in. By the time your average person who just wanted to stop seeing ads about Great Replacement Theory or whatever found their way into Bluesky, it was chock full of furry art, "fandom" posting from teenagers on the spectrum, and political rambling from people who haven't touched grass since puberty.
angoragoats 23 hours ago [-]
How does having a really tightly controlled and/or lengthy invite period translate into the user base being of one particular political viewpoint? I'm not seeing the causal link. Even if I take at face value your claim that "only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in," I still don't see how these subgroups or subcultures would necessarily have the same political views.
viccis 19 hours ago [-]
Well it self selected for left wing ones.
My point is normal people who aren't extremely online and part of 10 Discord servers with an internet friend network who can hook them up with an invite didn't get into Bluesky. Instead the people who, well, did, got the invites. Obviously the extremely online right didn't because they had other places to go and weren't welcomed by the bsky admins.
cestith 8 hours ago [-]
Twitter going so far right helped select Bluesky and Mastodon moving further left.
angoragoats 13 hours ago [-]
“Well it self selected for left wing ones” didn’t answer my question in the least, so I’ll just assume your claim is false.
echelon 6 hours ago [-]
Early BlueSky was seeded by furries, the trans community, socialist Democrats, and left-wing folks fleeing an overly Republican/MAGA Twitter.
The system was invite-based, meaning these people invited their friends. And those people invited their friends of friends.
The community was seeded by a very political base at its inception. The general feed the average user saw when opening the app was activist-political, furry art, dildos, and outrage. This continued for a year, I think?
This is not very welcoming to a general audience, and it severely knee-capped Bluesky's growth trajectory.
Here's the front page of Bluesky for a new user today:
Yes, I understand now that this is what the poster I was replying to was saying. But it's different from that poster's original argument, which I took to be that there was something inherent to the invite process that resulted in a politically one-sided user base.
But really, it's that Twitter shifted hard-right to literal Nazism, and so people left. Which is completely understandable.
viccis 2 hours ago [-]
>there was something inherent to the invite process that resulted in a politically one-sided user base
At no point did I make this claim. Bluesky's user base self selected for left wing viewpoints because Twitter had taken a hard right turn and Bluesky, mostly by way of moderation, was unwelcoming to the right wing. So left leaning people had a reason to leave Twitter and a friendly platform. Right wing people had no reason to leave Twitter and a hostile platform with Bluesky.
angoragoats 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Forgeties79 23 hours ago [-]
“Too political” usually means “not my politics” IME.
angoragoats 23 hours ago [-]
Maybe? But that doesn't really have much to do with my point.
Forgeties79 23 hours ago [-]
I was agreeing with you
viccis 19 hours ago [-]
>Twitter is a haven for people who are fans of generating non-consensual porn of others, white supremacy/white nationalism, murder of innocent civilians, and other reprehensible things.
It's really not. It's where everyone is right now. The Trots and Maoists. The demsoc local politicians. The vegan militant organizers. Etc. You can also include whatever shitty group you want to cherry pick to make your disingenuous ass argument. And when you do, post it to Bluesky where people can get a dopamine rush with you as they shake their heads and smile and post how horrible it is.
angoragoats 13 hours ago [-]
Based on this reply and others, it seems Twitter is frying your brain and you should probably stop using it.
Care to actually refute my point instead of saying “nuh uh” and lobbing some childish insults my way?
viccis 2 hours ago [-]
I never claimed to actively use Twitter anywhere in here.
angoragoats 23 minutes ago [-]
That still doesn't actually address my argument. And I assumed you did, since you said "It's where everyone is right now" (which is objectively false). So, as an aside, do you actively use Twitter? Or are you going to dodge that point too?
withinboredom 1 days ago [-]
I can only imagine someone looking over my shoulder on vacation to see what I'm posting: "oh, you have a 'close friends' group; why am I not in it?"
Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
notahacker 1 days ago [-]
Arbitrary labels make it really easy to give groups of close friends silly in-joke names rather than "close friends"...
Aurornis 23 hours ago [-]
> If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
This is a weird comment because it treats connections like they're only an asset for the person being followed.
The people doing the following aren't even considered. They're supposed to continuously re-follow the people they want to follow?
I don't see any upsides to this for anyone. I'm not reading social media every day. I don't want the network to automatically expire my follows and force me to remember and re-discover who I want to follow all the time. I don't want the people I follow feeling like they desperately need to pursue relevance instead of just being themselves.
If Selena Gomez is "socially irrelevant" then why do you care that she has 400 million followers? What does this take away from you in any way?
readitalready 23 hours ago [-]
Because I don't want to see all her posts on my timeline anymore. I have to actively unfollow her to do that, which is more work.
That's more work than even following someone, because it asks for confirmation or pops up a separate modal to unfollow, which it doesn't do for following someone. And so I don't even bother.
This leads to stale social networks and algorithmic timelines.
austhrow743 1 days ago [-]
>keeping the overall network fresh and relevant
What does this mean? Like in practical feature terms and benefit to the end user?
Your system kills the social networks ability to act as someone's modern day rolodex of contact information of previous acquaintances. What do they get in exchange for that?
readitalready 23 hours ago [-]
Social networks aren't rolodexes. They're newspapers.
grishka 24 hours ago [-]
As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree.
An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.
Barrin92 24 hours ago [-]
real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its first season putting the pathologies of social technologies on display that record everything.
It can be argued that humans actually hate forgetting things. That's why we invented writing. Spoken language lets us share arbitrarily abstract thoughts with others. But human memory is imperfect, so spreading knowledge or memories through word-of-mouth is unreliable. Writing lets us preserve that information as intended by the original author, potentially indefinitely. That's also why we always wanted to be able to record and play back what we hear and see, and our civilization only fairly recently, in terms of history, got advanced enough to have technologies to do that.
Barrin92 22 hours ago [-]
>It can be argued that humans actually hate forgetting things
I agree with you, I don't even think that needs to be argued, we without a doubt hate forgetting things, but we also hate eating our vegetables. We do hate a lot of things we probably shouldn't. We are perpetual hoarders, as a species we have the bad habit that we're not very grateful for the problems we don't have as a consequence of things we don't keep. We're not very good thinking in terms of absence.
That's why Marie Kondo sold a ton of books and got a great Netflix deal simply by teaching people how to throw stuff into the garbage. Civilization is great at record keeping but not doing too well on the social bonding front, or in the words of George Carlin: https://youtu.be/MvgN5gCuLac
biker142541 23 hours ago [-]
Nah, bad idea. The timeframe of an active connection really varies by age and type. Some important connections are once-every-few-years communications. A year, or two years, etc is too arbitrary.
RajT88 23 hours ago [-]
For example, I know a gal who foolishly invited her whole friend list to her 26th birthday party.
Did that weird guy from 3rd grade show up? He sure did.
Esophagus4 21 hours ago [-]
That… actually seems kinda fun…
I know this wasn’t the point I was supposed to take from your comment but I’m liking this idea
RajT88 20 hours ago [-]
It was really awkward, I can tell you.
The lesson here is not to invite your whole friend list.
latexr 14 hours ago [-]
> The lesson here is not to invite your whole friend list.
Maybe the lesson is to curate your friend list and don’t keep as a “friend” anyone you wouldn’t want to hang out with in person.
willsmith72 1 days ago [-]
Wait Kim and Selena are irrelevant? I guess I'm not keeping up with the times
650REDHAIR 1 days ago [-]
Yeah that was the most out of touch HN comment I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Persistent irrelevant celebrities are a real thing, but those two wouldn’t crack the top 500.
cestith 8 hours ago [-]
I mean… Danny Bonaduce and David Caruso are still celebrities. Not being in the top trending list doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant to culture.
readitalready 1 days ago [-]
I mean Kim & Selena will always have a certain level of celebrity status but people like Sydney Sweeney are currently a lot more popular. This is in terms of "are they the most popular people right now" as their instagram count states. They are literally in the top 10 on instagram right now.
apsurd 1 days ago [-]
i think you're talking about trending vs popular.
The signals are working as intended. More people will know Kim K than Sweeney because Kim K is more popular and has had more time to be more popular.
why am i talking about kim k on hn lol
readitalready 1 days ago [-]
The signals aren't really working though. It's why algorithms are required, because people want relevance instead of popularity.
Having fading connections equates relevance with popularity.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1 days ago [-]
Everything I learned about the Kardashians has been learned against my will.
apsurd 1 days ago [-]
haha yeah it makes her so obviously more popular and thus her follower count more "accurate". The parent's point is just hard to hold.
Pretty sure she founded or runs skims? She's Armenian, daughter of a famous lawyer in LA. Kanye. Sex tape. Early with the reality tv. I too did not seek out any of this knowledge!
Most just be a generational thing. Sweeney is still baking. She's actress from euphoria of which i didn't watch. That's about as much as i know. and the jeans ad controversy.
pixelpoet 1 days ago [-]
I honestly can't imagine a stronger indicator of somewhere I don't want to be than it having 400m Kim Kardashian fans
cortesoft 1 days ago [-]
I am confused... what is harmed by having stale connections? Why would connections be used as an editorial filter?
readitalready 23 hours ago [-]
Because you don't want to see posts from stale connections.
cortesoft 22 hours ago [-]
I assume you would just unfollow them if you want to stop seeing their posts? It sounded more like the person I was talking to was more concerned with follower counts being accurate, which doesn’t seem relevant for feed algorithms.
readitalready 18 hours ago [-]
No, I definitely wouldn't waste the 5 seconds it takes to unfollow someone. I'd rather spend that 5 seconds on the next interesting item instead.
alex1138 1 days ago [-]
Don't worry, Facebook already has Fading Connections
You can be married to each other and your posts won't show up on the other person's feed (there's a post on HN about this)
razingeden 1 days ago [-]
Xitter was kind of doing the same thing: I can’t see anything my mom posts, but I definitely have to see everything Elon’s mom does.
redox99 16 hours ago [-]
X actually kinda solved this. You have 3 tabs which solve all use cases IMO
- For you: Fully algorithmic, shows stuff even from people you don't follow
- Following (recently): Chronological posts from people you follow
- Following (popular): Algorithmic ordering just from people you follow
JumpCrisscross 1 days ago [-]
> Xitter
Is this an alternate front-end (Nitter) or shorthand for X/Twitter?
stavros 24 hours ago [-]
The latter.
sgerenser 23 hours ago [-]
And the X is pronounced like “sh.”
type0 24 hours ago [-]
I usually call it Xshitter
wffurr 23 hours ago [-]
The X is pronounced "sh".
alwa 1 days ago [-]
I don’t post on Facebook—HN is my closest analogue. But I assure you my partner(s) have no interest in seeing whatever I post here. Any more than I want to be in the thick of the extended-family group chats. Or, frankly, Facebook.
In that sense, maybe this is Facebook doing its part for domestic harmony…
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1 days ago [-]
I think the point was two people can be the absolute closest of friends, and Facebook will still fail to show them relevant posts.
alex1138 1 days ago [-]
It sure justifies the creepy People You May Know though, doesn't it? Which apparently outs sex workers and whatever else
If you're going to move fast and break things and connect the world full steam ahead (and damn the consequences like what happened in Myanmar) your platform better be absolutely rock solid but Facebook doesn't even do that. Its implementation of 'connection' is laughable
I'm pretty sure there was a Black Mirror episode about social scoring dictating peoples value/relevance. That was a good place for such a concept, because letting social media sites dictate someone's relevance is just weird. Relevance is a personal opinion, and should remain that way. People are free to stop following others. It works, and isn't dystopian.
ejoso 1 days ago [-]
I would hate it if the system removed nodes from my network without my influence. Perhaps a rules engine with user defined criteria would be useful.
Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it.
400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez relevant” and it responded with essentially “more in 2026 than ever.”
onemoresoop 1 days ago [-]
Could potentially show you withering connections you havent interacted with, almost an auto recycle bin with the option to dig on there and bring it back later on but dissapear from your main radius of attention if withered.
jamesfinlayson 17 hours ago [-]
Slack has started doing this in the last year or two - these are channels that you rarely interact with - want to leave?
locusofself 24 hours ago [-]
Instagram has something like this where it shows you "least interacted with". It seems broken to me though, as it showed me people who I do interact with.
charcircuit 19 hours ago [-]
Followers is a somewhat meaningless metric. Instead look at something like likes or views. The most relevant posts will spread via the algorithm and get the most views.
c0rruptbytes 23 hours ago [-]
i understand the intent, but selena is still extremely popular, especially amongst women...maybe a bad example
adi_kurian 23 hours ago [-]
A comically atrocious take.
dang 23 hours ago [-]
Can you please not post shallow dismissals or call names in HN comments? We're trying for something else here.
You're of course welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully.
Random idea: What if all the activity notifications arrived at the same time, eg 8pm every day? If any interactions depend on people being synchronously online together, notifications could be a strong way to make those features work when people don't have a ton of friends on this yet.
kenty 18 hours ago [-]
Good article but sorry but it should not be normalized that you have to have an iPhone to join a social network. Something clearly wrong there.
komali2 18 hours ago [-]
> So I created an iOS app for Friendster, and I made it so that in order to connect with someone as a friend, you have to actually tap phones together in real life.
And thus ensured your social network won't have 72% of the world on it... And locally for anyone outside the USA, a far higher percentage.
jmye 8 hours ago [-]
I mean, god forbid the guy start with one platform, right? Calling that "normalization" is just victimy, whining-about-blue-bubble bullshit.
Tade0 15 hours ago [-]
> Fading connections. If two friends go a full year without tapping phones, the link between them softens. Not a punishment — a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online.
I have this guy whom I used to be in touch with but now we meet every seven years randomly - happened two times already in completely different places and we're due for a meeting this year.
I would rather maintain this connection, because it's always fascinating to catch up after years.
0xbadcafebee 23 hours ago [-]
> this failed Apple App Store review because of Guideline 4.2 — Design — Minimum Functionality. They said “the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.”
This is why we need laws regulating mobile platforms. Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you use your phone for, or what apps you can give to your users. Doesn't work that way for PCs, shouldn't work that way for computers in your pocket.
ventana 20 hours ago [-]
Not trying to defend App Store policies, but writing this just for those who are struggling with Guideline 4.2 trying to publish an app that is only intended for a small group of users. There is a less well-known option called "unlisted app distribution", similar to unlisted YouTube videos: the app is public and can be downloaded using the direct link, but it cannot be found in App Store search. The "small, or niche, set of users" guideline normally does not apply for such apps.
To request unlisted distribution for your app, send it for review as usual, then file a special form [1], and mention that in the review notes.
Source: I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school. Its audience is, indeed, not of Apple scale: the school parents living nearby. Apple refused it as 4.2 and only agreed to publish it as unlisted, which I was okay with, because sharing the link between the parents was not a big deal. Google had no problems with publishing the Android app normally though.
> I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school.
Why would you not just make this a webpage, and then the users could add it to home page as if it were an app? no Apple review necessary then. What does it being an app give you besides bureaucratic headaches?
biztos 20 hours ago [-]
1. Many people are more comfortable with apps, and don't really "surf the web," and for such people "a webpage" is at best a hassle.
2. Those people and many more besides have no idea what "add it to home page" even means.
It being an app gives those people an experience that matches their normal use of technology, and I think they're probably a majority of users.
Plus, if the parent feels like making an app instead of a web page, who is Apple (or you, or I) to discourage that?
tmpfile 19 hours ago [-]
> 2. Those people and many more besides have no idea what "add it to home page" even means.
If Apple supported the beforeinstallprompt event (available in Chrome since 2015) then people would have same experience as installing app [0]. Instead, you must create a wrapper around webpage and submit thru App Store.
The main driver for making it into an app and not just a web page was the need to send push notifications. Of course, I just needed it for myself: hey, it's time to stop working and start driving to school to pick up the kid – "notify me 30 minutes before the last period ends" given that the schedule is different every day; then I just shared it with other parents.
There is a web version (it's Flutter so it was easy to make one), but parents use the app much more often.
Tepix 19 hours ago [-]
If you add a web page (a PWA) to the home screen, it can do push messages on iOS since a couple of years.
abustamam 18 hours ago [-]
The average person doesn't know this, nor what a PWA is.
Source: consulted for a company that had a PWA and paid me a lot of money to make it a native app because their users didn't know how to use the PWA.
w-ll 18 hours ago [-]
there still a lot of jank. on ios u can only doo this with safari, and even then u loose actual safari niceties like trad browser ui. and idk why but it op ens link in actual safari even if its the same app. unless u have a single page app that does nothing this is not a viable route/.
pastel8739 19 hours ago [-]
nobody knows how to do this; they do know how to install an app
ZeWaka 20 hours ago [-]
Users are /very/ not used to how to install PWAs to their home screen.
Also, in the EU it just opens the site up in your browser, no lack of browser UI like you'd expect. Apple is wonderful.
Edit: It seems I never got the news they reversed course on that particular idea of theirs.
sshine 20 hours ago [-]
I’m in the EU, and adding a website to Home Screen does hide the browser feel. Maybe this experience is different in different European jurisdictions.
Your point about users not being used to this is very real. I didn’t know you could until some app author showed me.
It really is as simple as sharing a link or copy-pasting, but if you don’t know it’s a think, it disappears into obscurity in the menus.
ZeWaka 19 hours ago [-]
Ah, it seems they reversed course after a few betas.
I really hate it when the browser UI gets hidden. It loses me several great features like the ability to open multiple tabs. Or have a bookmark directly to a subpage.
Unfortunately some other features are only available to PWA do it's a tradeoff either way.
Traubenfuchs 19 hours ago [-]
I live in the EU and just wrote my first PWA and that‘s not true, there is (almost) NO browser ui/ux.
No url bar, no back/forward, no tabs, nor translation, no menu bar, no loading indicator, just… pressing down on a link shows the target url and offers open, copy link, add to reading list and share -which honestly looks like a weird oversight.
suprfnk 19 hours ago [-]
I also have a small private app that technically could have been a PWA.
It’s not a PWA because the UX is just always inferior. Even though we’ve come really far in browser UIs, the browser is still very clunky compared to the smoothness of a native app.
And I like nice to use software.
simondotau 22 hours ago [-]
I often get in trouble on HN for being more sympathetic than most towards Apple. But that reasoning by Apple is ridiculous. They allow apps which only function if you buy a specific $100k+ EV, or some niche audiophile amp. Usefulness doesn’t get much more limited than that.
card_zero 22 hours ago [-]
What even is the idea, what would be the value in weeding out niche apps, if they did it consistently? To reduce the work involved in keeping everything in the garden lovely?
chihuahua 22 hours ago [-]
None of the app store rules are used as guiding principles for ensuring some higher goal. It's just a bunch of random rules that allow them to ban anything they don't like at any moment in time. Sometimes it's because of the whims of a particular app store reviewer, and sometimes it's to get rid of apps that compete with something Apple wants to do.
card_zero 21 hours ago [-]
[dead]
esperent 20 hours ago [-]
I've been thinking about this because I'm working on an internal company tool. It's a web app but I was thinking about creating mobile apps. In the age of agentic coding, that's no longer a massive undertaking like it used to be.
However, I'm completely blocked by Apple app store review. There's no way an app designed for 30 people would pass.
I can't get an internal app onto people's phone. I could release it as a test app but that might get blocked at any point.
I can at least release a PWA but as I understand even that might get notifications blocked at any point, with no recourse, and of course functionality is highly limited.
So the goal here is clear: don't allow people to write small apps.
Apple can then make sure they are only allowing apps that required enough work, both initially and ongoing, that nearly everyone will feel the need to charge, or include ads, and then Apple gets a 30% cut every time.
As for why a car company's app passes, obviously they don't want anyone with enough power to challenge this in court, politically, or in the media. So those get a pass.
larusso 20 hours ago [-]
There is Apple enterprise for this reason. Depending on the set of APIs you want to use (which should be limited since you spoke of webapps), it allows you to distribute internal business apps.
Don’t know how known this is. But we use it mainly for internal testing.
> The Apple Developer Enterprise Program allows large organizations to develop and deploy proprietary, internal-use apps to their employees
> Your organization must:
> Have 100 or more employees
Again, it's clear that they're providing this out so that organizations with power don't have to start a fight, while small organizations can't do anything.
Even aside from that, it's clearly going to be so much work that we wouldn't be able to do it. I'm the only developer at the company, I cannot get bogged down in Apple review processes.
linohh 20 hours ago [-]
For internal apps, you could go through ADEP [1] if you want to avoid the app store + review + custom apps route. But eligibility requriements have been tightened over the years IIRC.
You should be using an enterprise cert for this. You won’t have any issues with enrollment or distribution that way.
esperent 18 hours ago [-]
We don't meet the requirements. Large organizations only. Minimum of 100 employees.
1123581321 2 hours ago [-]
Ah, in that case, unlisted release or through business manager, if you don't want to risk TestFlight (I'd personally do and have done TestFlight with internal sites where we uploaded OTA installs.)
itake 19 hours ago [-]
I think its just to mitigate spam apps. The window's app store is kinda garbage. Apple doesn't want to spend their QA resources on apps that only 10 people can use.
happymellon 19 hours ago [-]
I think the solution to that is allowing an alternative app store that could manage all that for them.
rTX5CMRXIfFG 19 hours ago [-]
I don’t believe that the government should police what types of computers I can build. I occasionally tinker with hardware myself and have been thinking up ways to build a smartphone differently. If I want to make the device so that it only interoperates with a certain class of items, I would rather build nothing at all than be forced by the government to interop with everything, which is also a costly thing to develop.
I get it that people want more freedom from their iPhones but the thing about consumer devices is that they are an expression of a certain philosophy of how computers should work. Being a walled garden is one such approach. If you don’t agree with how a device operates on principle, you should not buy it—there’s Android or derivatives. You’re also likely to be a power user who’s in an incredible small minority because iPhone sales keep getting better every year and the walled garden approach has market (as in free market) validation.
Now, if your objective is to regulate monopolies, I think that the policing should happen in the supply chain and production side instead of the consumer software side. You don’t have more options than iPhone and Android because big players like Apple and Samsung have captured manufacturing facilities with long-term exclusivity contracts, making innovation in the space prohibitively expensive. But the law shouldn’t dictate what sort of computer innovators are allowed to build.
RobotToaster 18 hours ago [-]
>I don’t believe that the government should police what types of computers I can build.
They already do, one of the reasons it's so hard to make a smartphone is all the FCC regulations on radios.
rTX5CMRXIfFG 16 hours ago [-]
That’s not related to the subject at hand, which is regulation preventing anti-competitive practices in monopolies and market failures. I thought that was clearly established, or you need to be over-prompted
raymondgh 20 hours ago [-]
It’s uncomfortable to agree because I think companies should decide what they do and don’t allow in the ecosystems they own. But once an ecosystem becomes so pervasive & necessary, I think control must be turned over to the people.
xhevahir 20 hours ago [-]
That rule reminds me of Raya. Isn't the whole idea of that service (which is only available on iOS, I think) that it's only intended for a small group of users, who've been invited?
nerdsniper 20 hours ago [-]
It's for rich people though, different rules apply when you're well-connected.
21 hours ago [-]
j45 19 hours ago [-]
Wording can go a long way - calling it early access, and saying invitations will allow you to invite your friends as the platform opens up can paint a similar picture in a different way.
eru 19 hours ago [-]
You know that websites are a thing, and you can visit them from your phone?
leptons 18 hours ago [-]
Apple also shouldn't force you to use Safari if you install Chrome on iOS, but so far the DOJ hasn't followed through with the antitrust lawsuit started under the previous administration. I guess gold participation trophies are enough to work around lawsuits depending on who is in charge.
They dictate the capabilities that their device is offered and how the device is designed. It is up to the consumer to decide if that is worth the price of the device.
callc 22 hours ago [-]
This argument falls apart since there is no real freedom of choice, and the importance of smartphones in our lives.
People are becoming more aware that they don’t want a corporation in control over this essential near ubiquitous technology.
I see no good reason to follow a “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want” mindset
plandis 22 hours ago [-]
Who is forcing you to exclusively buy into Apple’s ecosystem?
Are other competitors banned where you live?
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
To be blunt it doesn't matter if you have a choice or not - this sort of behavior shouldn't be permitted either way. It's an appliance that at this point serves an essential function in society so user hostile behavior ought to be strictly prohibited.
The guiding principle should continue to be that manufacturers and retailers don't get to control the second hand market or dictate what users do with the things they purchase. Digital controls used to thwart the owner's freedom should be outlawed.
charcircuit 16 hours ago [-]
Appliances have had safety mechanisms that would equivalently prevent user modification of certain elements long before digital controls existed.
armada651 22 hours ago [-]
Apple is, because of vendor-lock in. Once you're sufficiently dependent on Apple's ecosystem it becomes painful to switch to a competitor because it requires switching to a different smartphone which then locks you out of most of Apple's ecosystem.
wrqvrwvq 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
geoffmanning 20 hours ago [-]
Who the heck are you? Are you a real person? I don't understand how any human can argue that this is ok.
jmye 8 hours ago [-]
> This argument falls apart since there is no real freedom of choice
Absolute, unmitigated bullshit. You are not forced to buy an iPhone by anyone, ever.
> “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want”
Then perhaps you should make the absolutely tiny mental leap to "And I don't have to buy if it doesn't work the way I want it to."
Apple has 32% market share - pretending you don't have any other choice is utterly fallacious nonsense.
Loughla 22 hours ago [-]
You are correct and I don't get OP's point. Don't want apple rules, don't use apple products. They are the business, they can do what they want with it, right?
rileymat2 22 hours ago [-]
We have consistently made exceptions to this rule in situations with limited choices. We would not abide by the electric company dictating a range of things, even of you have the option to run your own generator.
The truth is there are two reasonable platforms, as long as that is the case we should apply scrutiny.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
I'd go even farther than that. The US should adopt an equivalent of the second amendment regarding end user control over personal electronics and it should bind not only the government but also private enterprise. We are increasingly dependent on these devices to go about our day to day lives and they have not only been used against us for mass surveillance but are also quickly gaining the ability to exhibit intelligence and act autonomously.
jmye 8 hours ago [-]
> We would not abide by the electric company dictating a range of things, even of you have the option to run your own generator.
An absurdly dishonest comparison. Which you (hopefully) knew when you made it.
necovek 17 hours ago [-]
Car makers cannot do anything they want and call it a car. The motivation there is safety, but it's long been argued that personal computing devices are today extension of our lives.
Even more comparable is postal rules: at least here, there are very explicit rules about opening someone else's mail, or even destroying it. Even if postal/courier services are businesses, they have to operate within the boundaries a society sets up for them.
And finally, you can take it even further: some "businesses" operate on the fringes of legality and sometimes illegally too (think loan shark operations, casinos, betting markets... but also "protection services" and similar).
21 hours ago [-]
Teever 20 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's the way to look at it.
There are standards for interoperability and user-friendliness with all kinds of devices, and we should expect the same from modern devices.
It would have been pretty peculiar and unacceptable if your telephone in the 80s couldn't call your neighbour because the telephone company just decided to not make them interoperable, why shouldn't it be the same here?
sekh60 19 hours ago [-]
Email probably could not happen today.
paulddraper 22 hours ago [-]
This is true of 98% of regulations.
(The only exceptions are government-granted monopolies.)
krupan 22 hours ago [-]
Have you heard of Android? Graphene OS? You do have freedom of choice here
matheusmoreira 22 hours ago [-]
Not for long if Google has any say about it. Hardware remote attestation is here, and it's the number one threat to mobile computing freedom.
The future is one where everyone can, theoretically, install anything they want, but they get banned from everything should they actually do so. Rooted system? Attestation fails. "Oh no, looks like someone tampered with the system". Can't access your bank account. Can't communicate via WhatsApp. Can't watch something on the streaming services. Can't even play video games.
Discrimination against "untrustworthy" devices, where "untrustworthy" means not corporate owned. Leading to complete ostracization.
doug-moen 21 hours ago [-]
GrapheneOS already has their own attestation API that verifies the app is running on GrapheneOS. Since GrapheneOS is more secure than stock Android, security conscious apps like banking apps have a solid technical reason to use the API and support Graphene.
We just need to raise the profile of GrapheneOS and convince more banking apps to use this API, if they are already using Google's attestation API.
GrapheneOS's strategy for raising their profile and being seen as more legitimate is that they've formed a partnership with Motorola Mobility, who will be manufacturing Graphene compatible phones. <https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at...>
matheusmoreira 12 hours ago [-]
> Since GrapheneOS is more secure than stock Android, security conscious apps like banking apps have a solid technical reason to use the API and support Graphene.
Corporations don't use such things for technical reasons. Their reasons are political. They want control. The "security" they talk about isn't the user's security, it's their own security from the user.
> We just need to raise the profile of GrapheneOS and convince more banking apps to use this API
And until they do, GrapheneOS is permanently at risk of being shut out of the market.
And even if they do, it just means we've become dependent on GrapheneOS. They won't trust our keys, only those of corporations. Our freedom is still compromised.
0xbadcafebee 19 hours ago [-]
That would immediately exclude 124 million Americans. Freedom of choice would be giving us the same choice we already have on PCs. We shouldn't keep allowing the mobile duopoly to control this vital and ubiquitous resource for their profit at our expense.
themafia 20 hours ago [-]
I can run Android on Apple hardware? I have freedom to purchase. There is no choice.
inventor7777 22 hours ago [-]
Unless you want third party WebViews... (on normal Android)
(Technically besides the point, but that is a broad statement)
Groxx 22 hours ago [-]
"There's a small corner where they're just as bad! Checkmate!"
I totally agree that should be swappable, but what is your point? Apple doesn't even allow installing stuff outside their store in most places, and had to be legally forced to do it in some because of how ridiculous that obviously is (thanks, EU!). And even there they still have some control with their notarization process. Android is wildly more open in major, meaningful ways, despite some failures.
krupan 22 hours ago [-]
Well that's a totally different problem from restricting which apps you are allowed to install
ajmurmann 22 hours ago [-]
You can still install this just not through a public listing on the app store. Apple provides various solutions for different audiences.
journal 22 hours ago [-]
Apple provides various obstacles for different reasons.
y42 10 hours ago [-]
I can't believe that domain trading is still a thing.. I am sitting on a bunch of "nice" domains; I could never imagine someone actually bought for not even vor 100 bucks... and here we are, 30k?
OK.
rohith2506 18 hours ago [-]
Any chance of making the code open source? Would love to contribute to this and build more features needed. It’s an absolute bliss to see such a clean UI and no nonsense. I think you should consider that. Thanks for building this
dgellow 15 hours ago [-]
> the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.
Isn’t it insane that Apple refuses for an app to be listed on the App Store if it is intended to be niche? If true that’s pretty shocking
avianlyric 13 hours ago [-]
It’s always been true. If you want to build a limited distribution app Apple has mechanisms for private distribution which is used by companies for internal apps etc
They don’t want the App Store filled with app that can’t be used by the vast majority of people that might see and download it.
fundatus 12 hours ago [-]
> If you want to build a limited distribution app Apple has mechanisms for private distribution which is used by companies for internal apps etc
Yeah, but that wouldn't be an option for this app obviously.
> They don’t want the App Store filled with app that can’t be used by the vast majority of people that might see and download it.
Then they should add alternative methods. Instead they are actively sabotaging such efforts, for example by the EU. Want to distribute an iOS app in the EU through the web? Yeah, as a requirement you need an app with 1m annual downloads[1] already in the AppStore before they allow you to do that. Which completely defeats the point.
I would have previously said I don't blame Apple for not prioritizing that rare use case.
But with so many people vibe-coding apps, I do think it'd be good if Apple simplified the experience for non-developers. I made a stupid little rhythm game ("Headbang") this weekend that is controlled by AirPods head movement and I'd love to share it with two people and two people only. They would run it once and then never again.
Havoc 13 hours ago [-]
It’s likely more the exclusionary nature rather than niche per se that was the challenge
Then again presumably there are plenty of organization specific apps that are also decidedly exclusionary
lopis 12 hours ago [-]
So you can't sideload apps on iOS, installing your own apps in dev mode is unnecessarily hard and restricted, and you can't release an app in the app store that is not open to the general public? So if I want to build an app just for my family, what do I do?
dgellow 5 hours ago [-]
I think the answer is to use TestFlight? So you can provide a link to your family that will let them install the test version of the app. Unfortunately it does expire after some time, IIRC
zimmund 3 hours ago [-]
Considering I have most of my friends living abroad and how little I get to see other people (especially the ones that would use this app), I won't even bother downloading it. I don't need an app to feel lonely...
lossyalgo 48 minutes ago [-]
Maybe it's time to make new friends who live nearby :)
madduci 18 hours ago [-]
I believe a cool initiative would be to create a mastodon instance with the domain
jedberg 9 hours ago [-]
> Fading connections. If two friends go a full year without tapping phones, the link between them softens. Not a punishment — a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online.
One of my very best friends lives in another country. We speak nearly every day, but I haven't seen them in person in over a year.
Another of my friends lives on the other side of the USA. We speak a few times a week, but I haven't seen them in person in about four years now. And that was only because their mom lived nearby. His mom moved, so it's unlikely we'll see each other except once a decade when we do our friends trip to Vegas.
I have other very close friends who I almost never see in person.
My point being, having to tap phones is cool and all but not a great measure of the strength of friendship.
mrsvanwinkle 8 hours ago [-]
You may have convinced me that this phone tapping thing may, and I am being super serious here, lead to something much much bigger than mere social networks.
I am convinced that this weird Phone Tapping thing may be the next evolutionary step from both social networks and the dead Internet theory (evolution not meant jokingly i.e. both naturally selected and the baby only got the recessive regressions).
The real solution hinges on maybe a future Turing award or Fields medal on physical cryptography for auth/integrity/privacy... but even without that. This is how Facebook got its "grassroots" userbase, from elite students verified via .edu email.
If a Friendster 2.0 actually doubles down on this physicality, and actually concentrate its efforts on making the very act of having to RE-TAP the physicality of a social connection, for example your friends may have an option to fund your trips to meet together if about to get disconnected.
Or of course it might end up being Facebook 2.0 and sell your Physical data to Cambridge Analytica 2.0 to make Grok beta emperor of Great North America CoProsperity Sphere
sikozu 1 days ago [-]
This is crazy, but unfortunately I don't have an iPhone otherwise I'd totally sign up.
block_dagger 23 hours ago [-]
I attended a concert last night and was wishing for this exact kind of app, being able to quickly exchange a follow with someone you just met in real life but will otherwise never see again unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward. Could spawn some special relationships.
jubilanti 21 hours ago [-]
> unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward
How is this any less awkward? "Oh do you have the new Friendster app?" "Friendster? Isn't that from the 1900s?" "No, the new Friendster, see you download it, register, then we bump phones...."
Maybe just because I'm an autistic introvert, but the idea of asking someone to exchange numbers is terrifying enough, but at least this is an almost universal social ritual that people understand implicitly. I ask if you want to keep in touch and exchange phone numbers. I do not need to explain literally anything else and the other person almost always knows what I mean, how to do it, and what thin social relationship that implies. And if they don't seem to understand or are hesitant, but are otherwise coherent and cogent, I take the message that they don't want to keep in touch.
Now add a new app to download (iPhone only), a new social network to register, a new social ritual... Are they being hesitant because this is a new app or because they don't actually want to keep in touch? No thanks.
spiralcoaster 20 hours ago [-]
I love that you're looking to "spawn some special relationships" but are unwilling to ask for a name/number. There's no app in the world that will stop you from "wishing" you took action in getting some girls number.
19 hours ago [-]
komali2 18 hours ago [-]
"Add me on Line/Insta," display your QR code or scan theirs, fire off your first message "Daft Punk Concert" so you remember how you met.
addedGone 1 days ago [-]
We can't seem to be able to login from the website, it requires an Apple account? The UI might not be showing up properly.
altairprime 1 days ago [-]
It’s app-only, right?
sikozu 1 days ago [-]
iOS only unfortunately. Big shame.
altairprime 24 hours ago [-]
Not for the operators, I expect. If they flip a couple bits in the webserver I think they can lock the API down to require a device attestation, which would inhibit much of the API’s attack surface from being exploitable without a physical device that can afford to be console-banned (but I haven’t done my research to prove that yet, so grain of feasibility salt). Certainly in this day and age there is no desire to be “search engine optimized” by anyone using a social network for IRL friends, so they lose nothing by lacking a website. And there’s lots of small but nice services that are or have been iOS only (and a couple big ones that collapsed once they opened to other platforms). They’re explicitly selecting against the network effect already in favor of a nice experience, so it’s not like it matters if it grows more slowly. Are there drawbacks you see besides “requires an iOS device” that I haven’t considered?
addedGone 3 hours ago [-]
there is the fact that you just can't have your friends using it?
theogravity 1 days ago [-]
When you're building a social networking site like this, when do you need to start to worry about laws from different states and countries (eg age bans, data export, etc)?
toast0 23 hours ago [-]
I mean, it's good to be aware from the beginning, even if you don't intend to follow them right away.
But, my rule of thumb is you don't really need to worry about laws from places where they don't have real jurisdiction on you. If they filed suit, would you rather respond or make a note to never visit that place / would you be ok if all your users from there were blocked from contacting you by law?
martin-t 1 days ago [-]
As a guy who used to run game servers[0] and some other small-web stuff, I hate that this is one of the first questions that springs to mind today, but I'd also like to know.
[0]: in ancient times when server meant an actual server
lwhi 1 days ago [-]
Why no android app?
ca98am79 1 days ago [-]
I plan to make one in the future. It's just me
lawgimenez 20 hours ago [-]
Would love to take a crack on this on Android
pixel_popping 1 days ago [-]
Why no website as well? Can't use it from a laptop, it's a bit strange for a social media, many don't like typing on a phone.
randallsquared 1 days ago [-]
That's a great question, since the genesis of this was the domain name, which no one using the app will care about or visit. That is, the only thing that was actually needed here was the trademark, it appears.
GaryBluto 1 days ago [-]
Especially odd considering that Friendster began at a time when social media on phones was unheard of.
Quarrelsome 1 days ago [-]
I remember when we considered a website that tells the user to download an app an anti-pattern (e.g. earlier versions of iMusic).
s0a 1 days ago [-]
why not a proper Progress Web App so it can run on any device independent of app stores? it's not as though a social app needs deep OS integration. I'm sure Claude or Codex could vibe code that in an afternoon.
axoltl 1 days ago [-]
The central point of this app is to determine proximity of two devices. That's not possible today in a cross-platform way using web apps.
s0a 1 days ago [-]
PWA has access to bluetooth (BLE on all platforms) and NFC on Android
JumpCrisscross 1 days ago [-]
> PWA has access to bluetooth (BLE on all platforms) and NFC on Android
This (EDIT: this app) is iOS only right now. And I hate the normalisation of giving websites access to Bluetooth and NFC.
chabska 24 hours ago [-]
I managed to make an ESP32-controlled RC car move by sending it commands from a webapp running on my Android phone last year. I don't believe I have telekinesis magic power, so I'd rather believe that this is not in-fact iOS only.
JumpCrisscross 23 hours ago [-]
Sorry, clarified.
pixel_popping 1 days ago [-]
You can with the Geolocation API.
bossyTeacher 1 days ago [-]
The main functionality to add friends is that you need to use the phones physically touching feature of iPhones. This doesn't exist in Android afaik.
The guy wants people to meet in person rather than doing social media the normie way.
toyg 1 days ago [-]
Android has QuickShare which can be leveraged.
For the record, the feature you describe was first introduced on Samsung phones 14 years ago - and later removed, likely after poor adoption. Because Apple "reinvented it", it's now planned to be reintroduced on Android too.
Clearly targeted towards a US only audience I guess?
gpm 1 days ago [-]
Even in the US... something like half of people have an android.
Starting a network effect product like a social network where you exclude half the social graph seems like... quite a decision.
pixel_popping 1 days ago [-]
It's likely much more than half because I don't see a guy working on his laptop and switching on his phone to be able to answer messages, I personally never use social medias on a phone, it's annoying to type.
QuantumNomad_ 1 days ago [-]
I prefer most communication to happen from my phone. Keeps the laptop less distracting when I don’t talk with people so much on it. Except Slack on work computer. That one I keep open and use for talking with coworkers. But that’s because it’s part of the job, and also relevant for me and them to be talking about things we are working on.
moffkalast 14 hours ago [-]
I think it's more like 70% Apple in the US and Android 30%, whereas most elsewhere it's reversed.
citizenkeen 1 days ago [-]
Worked for Facebook.
hateful 1 days ago [-]
The only thing I liked when I did use Facebook was the "wall". To be able to post on a friend's wall semi- publically where their friends can see it. Most other Facebook clones have had the idea of tagging, but it wasn't the same. (E.g. Google+)
halamadrid 1 days ago [-]
This is quite amazing. I remember being on the original friendster way back in the day. They had so much potential. And there was also orkut.com that was even better because of the simpler UX. Then came Facebook and you all know the rest.
fouc 21 hours ago [-]
I remember Friendster being very popular in parts of Latin America / Brazil and Philippines. I think you could definitely get a lot of users through the nostalgia factor.
arlattimore 19 hours ago [-]
Tapping phones seems very limiting. I don’t see most of my friends in person that often, different cities etc.
I think a better alternative would be a phone number.
You only give your number to friends, which aligns with the brand and product concept.
Allows more of your friends to join via your address book, good for the app growth.
Might also mean indirectly you can’t follow a non-personal page which also aligns to the brand and product concept.
chadpaulson 19 hours ago [-]
I agree. There should be a hierarchy of intimacy, as it were, in order to initiate a friendship.
* Tapping Phones
* Confirming Phone Number
* Confirming Email
* Connected via Other Platforms (Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, etc)
As far as maintaining a friendship by tapping phones, again, I would make the friendships a constant and graph / rank intimacy by how often you tap phones as well as how connected you are to your friend (phone, email, connections on other networks).
arlattimore 17 hours ago [-]
I love the idea of hierarchy of intimacy, that is a great concept/phrase.
I'd make it so you could tap a phone, you know their phone number, you know their email. Importantly in my eyes, you shouldn't be able to navigate to a profile and just ask to connect as that'd mean you could do that to people you don't actually know (whereby knowing is inferred by you knowing some amount of their personal info such as tap, phone, email).
I'd stay away from your last option of 'other platforms', per my other reply below in that those platforms allow you to connect to anyone/anything. There is nothing in them that say this connection is inherently personal vs being generic.
chadpaulson 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I agree after thinking about it. Connecting other social networks makes it difficult to distinguish Friendster as an intimate and honest platform free of spam.
The intimacy levels can be IRL (when you tap phones), Phone (when you friend via phone number) and Email (when you friend via email address). You could also measure the intimacy hierarchy / rank by keeping track of events (should events become a feature) you attend with other friends.
delis-thumbs-7e 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe it’s just not for you then.
Why people automatically think that social media should be like facebook and you should be global entity with billions of users? Wouldn’t actual social - in the literal meaning of the word - media mean that you share cool shit with maybe 3-10 of your closest friends who you actually see and hang out with, who are local to you? If you have an online game community, maybe you should meet once a year for IRL beer to tap phones? Perhaps we don’t live in a global village after all, perhaps we are are dumb tribal monkeys with super computers in our pockets?
socalgal2 18 hours ago [-]
I hate phone numbers and hate given them out and I hate that I'm required to even have on in 2026. I'm reachable without one. The majority of my friends do not know my phone number. Only the really old ones from back before messaging apps with free calling
arlattimore 17 hours ago [-]
In my head, the new Friendster owner wants to drive some amount of true personal connection - hence the tapping.
The problem I see with not using a phone number as I described, is that you'd be connecting to any old social profile - could be Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
None of those are inherently personal, it'd open up Friendster to be not materially different to any other social network as those networks don't have the concept of a personal connection - they are just generic connections (some are personal, many/most are not).
tim-projects 5 hours ago [-]
I bought a domain called youfriend.me about ten years ago with the exact same premise, tapping the phones together in real life. But I never developed it.
Cool to see someone did
shahzaibmushtaq 17 hours ago [-]
The previous owner bought it for $8000 (quite less for domains like this) but here is the catch. This domain has a bad reputation and a lot of negativity since it has a long history.
Those who are in domain name business knows that because it affects the value of every expired/operational domain.
mathattack 5 hours ago [-]
I find it interesting how old brands are being rebooted. Andersen Consulting is back.
If you can resurrect Old Spice, why not try it elsewhere?
dbgrman 19 hours ago [-]
TIL ppl have domains that make $9k/yr and here i am being happy my niche app is bringing me $200/mo revenue
temporallobe 1 days ago [-]
I worked with the guy that created Friendster! IIRC he made it back in ‘06/‘07 and I had one of the first test accounts. Chill dude, really smart.
sgerenser 23 hours ago [-]
Had to be even earlier than that, I graduated college in 2006 and I’m pretty sure someone turned me on to Friendster at least a couple years before.
dnnddidiej 1 days ago [-]
Nice. Quick hypoyhetical. Meta offers $1bn in 5 years time when you have 2m users. Will you sell?
If so this is a meta-or-dead social network.
Making it federated etc. would make me trust it more.
bpt3 1 days ago [-]
If that's your standard, you basically can't interact with any entity other than megacorps, which you obviously disdain.
What is the benefit of that perspective? It's just social media. If it goes away tomorrow, no real loss. Use it accordingly.
dnnddidiej 23 hours ago [-]
It is good to point out this alternative is 90% likely going to be a rugpull on "nice cosy 90s style social network" by systemic factors. Regardless of the intent of the owner.
I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.
bpt3 20 hours ago [-]
It's not a rugpull, because there's nothing invested by users.
Again, there's no alternative that meets your original criteria let alone your additional ones.
IshKebab 16 hours ago [-]
I mean.. yeah. That's why no "Facebook like 2007" social networks have happened since. It would have to be run by someone with a lot of built up trust in order for people to trust it in the way that people did with Facebook. The world has been burnt.
If say, Valve started a social network I would consider using it because they've had decades to screw up Steam and they haven't. It is a bit outside their wheelhouse though.
This random guy though?
cestith 8 hours ago [-]
Steam friends chat is already my primary method of contact for certain people, having very little to do with playing games together.
pixel_popping 1 days ago [-]
Anyone will sell any project for $1bn, absurd take.
furyofantares 1 days ago [-]
Craigslist never sold afaik, theres loads of other example companies worth more than a billion now that never sold. Depends how you define "project" of course, but you gotta make sure you don't define it such that this would no longer be a "project" when it's worth 1bn. Also everything that sells for more than 1bn is something that presumably nobody would sell for 1bn.
The idea that anyone would sell any project for 1bn is kinda nonsense, if a project looks worth buying for 1bn to someone, it may look to be worth keeping to the people who made it or are in control of it.
sikozu 1 days ago [-]
I'd probably sell any project of mine for $1m, I'm very cheap.
wongarsu 1 days ago [-]
$1B is life changing money. More than you can reasonably spend, unless you start an airline or something like that. $1m is like two Ferraris. If you buy the second one used. Of course it's also life-changing amounts of money to many. It's enough to retire in a cheap country. But only if you are very careful about your money
There are a lot of projects I would sell for $1m, but it is little enough that I would carefully consider for anything I've invested serious time into
dawnerd 1 days ago [-]
I dunno, if I spent even a couple years building something and could sell it for a million relatively quickly I probably would too unless it's something I'm really passionate about. I've sold side projects for waaaay less.
irishcoffee 23 hours ago [-]
I’ve always wanted to own a sports team. I think I need 10-15 1B exits to make that a reality.
MattRix 1 days ago [-]
That is literally their point.
trueno 1 days ago [-]
yea the moment 1bn was on the table id quickly think about how not-necessary social media is for humanity and id take the check and peace out like tom from myspace & proceed to drink liquor out of coconuts on a beach somewhere.
though id have the utmost respect for someone who could hold onto the possibility to threaten the facebook/instagram/snapchat moat, realistically i don't think anyone in here could stick to the ideals so strongly.
it's not even a valuable thought exercise. if this thing were to gain any traction at all it's assuredly gonna get acquired. you gotta be tech-buddha to resist that.
echoangle 1 days ago [-]
I think the point was that it should be unsellable. If it’s federated, how are you able to sell it? Then, it could be trusted.
JumpCrisscross 1 days ago [-]
> If it’s federated, how are you able to sell it?
The domain would dominate sign-up flows.
ca98am79 1 days ago [-]
or already have enough money
chr15m 1 days ago [-]
Incorrect.
ianpenney 1 days ago [-]
“My wife and I met on okcupid”
… 11 years going for me. Good on you. I don’t have any other social media accounts. I’ll do my best to join up on this one. Wholesome.
e12e 14 hours ago [-]
> All of this is built around the simple idea that real friendships happen when you actually meet in person.
I understand the sentiment - but this would make it useless for my closest friends - we live in different cities and countries now - and it would take years to fill in the social graph. We would all have to travel and meet everyone else.
I suppose this is alleviated by the talk to a friend of a friend feature - but does sound like it partially excludes friends with limited mobility.
gk1 11 hours ago [-]
Seen from another angle: this encourages you to make new friends locally.
And yes, also one more excuse to visit faraway friends.
thinkingemote 16 hours ago [-]
A dream I had last night was for a social network based on the deep but brief conversations we have in park benches, club toilets, hospital waiting rooms. Where we are totally open somewhat vulnerable but free from commitments. Think about the first conversation you have had with a friend, often it's the most revealing or deep one you may have.
Somewhat anonymous, short in time, one to one, with the potential to connect afterwards on outside channels. Possibly only one conversation a day allowed, and possibly only available to pre set contacts.
usaphp 17 hours ago [-]
If you meet someone this often to touch your phones, why do you even need to have an app to talk to that person? The beauty of social apps is that I can talk to someone who I can’t physically meet that often
kube-system 8 hours ago [-]
The people I meet in person with the most are the people I talk to on social media the most.
ptspts 15 hours ago [-]
Does the new owner of the domain friendster.com also own the company, the patents and the other pieces of intellectual property? The article seemed to be unclear about this.
mattmerr 1 days ago [-]
What does "a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue" look like? Is this domain one where people randomly stumble upon it and give ad views to a parking page? A website with regular use or other content that people visit for some purpose that is now under different ownership?
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1 days ago [-]
Probably a parked domain with ads that people stumble across. We used to call these guys cybersquatters.
justinclift 1 days ago [-]
They're still called cybersquatters, except for some unknown reason ICANN has decided to not actually do anything about them. :(
jasonkester 19 hours ago [-]
I really like the idea of a “facebook before it got bad “, with just people you actually know posting about what they’re up to.
But the “tap phones” thing wouldn’t work for me.
Most of my friends and family live halfway around the world from me. I visit the states every couple years, and make a point of seeing them when I can, but the reality is I live here and they live there (a dozen different theres in half a dozen countries)
Those are the people I want an app like this to keep up with. But they’re the people your app won’t even let me add as friends.
tracker1 8 hours ago [-]
Well, I'm an android user, so no onramp for me... not to mention, I prefer to use my desktop, where I can actually see the screen better.
everyos_ 21 hours ago [-]
What if somebody's phone is of an alternative type, like a flip phone, and they can't install the app needed to tap phones? Then how will they become friends with another
kube-system 8 hours ago [-]
Not everything needs to be for everyone
phyzome 21 hours ago [-]
Or they just don't want to install another goddamn app.
Hitton 14 hours ago [-]
Too bad Apple wouldn't allow the registration requiring the tapping - it would have been cool if whole social network was a tree with a single root - the founder.
Ofc it's probably for the better if it's to have a chance to spread at least a little.
forbiddenvoid 22 hours ago [-]
This seems really cool for people whose friend networks are physically located in the same place they are.
That's not me, and hasn't been for probably 20 years.
But it's a neat idea regardless.
skybrian 1 days ago [-]
I'm imagining one of those tiny libraries with a garden gnome in it with a cheap phone inside, connected to a garden gnome Friendster account.
And then it gets stolen and has a trip around the world, meeting new people.
makingstuffs 23 hours ago [-]
This sounds cool and similar to something I’ve been building! I say similar as we have different ideas and target audiences — What I’m building is a niche network specifically targeting people who are travellers or friends that like holidaying together. I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming or self promoting so will keep the link out but will share if people want.
Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.
pjmlp 19 hours ago [-]
I was going to complain about being the first given that I never used it, but indeed, Hi5 and My Space came an year later.
11 hours ago [-]
bluebarbet 1 days ago [-]
>I don’t really care about making money from [$project], but I’d like it to eventually pay for itself.
Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).
ca98am79 1 days ago [-]
"no ads" - it is explicitly stated on the website and app store page
RF_Enthusiast 22 hours ago [-]
Just a thought: you could incorporate a non-profit to run the site, like Wikipedia or public radio/media, and be the president of that organization. For me, donating to a non-profit is much easier than a voluntary subscription to a for-profit corporation.
Love the app, I’ve already had some photos shared with me!
malfist 1 days ago [-]
Facebook also didn't have ads when it started
irishcoffee 23 hours ago [-]
Facebook ads began in 2004 with simple "Flyers" for small businesses, but the official, targeted Facebook Ads platform launched in November 2007. While rudimentary banner ads appeared in 2005-2006, the 2007 launch introduced brand pages, social ads, and user insights.
Facebook launched in 2004. They always had ads.
ljlolel 22 hours ago [-]
I just made a similar idea focused on games only with people next to you, https://lorehex.co/ can you reach out to me and we can connect? my website and contact info at jperla.com
dewey 22 hours ago [-]
> The DNS records for lorehex.co are not properly configured. Please check your DNS settings.
juleiie 15 hours ago [-]
I have sliver of idea for social media based on curiosity and knowledge tidbits.
Each user gives itself some field of interest, maybe its makeup, maybe its molecular biology, maybe it's something else. Then the system finds similar people with same interests.
There are no subreddits with abusive moderators, no rigid containers. Just that you get content you are interested in based on genuine people. Then you can like talk to them about these things or see them posting about the stuff
and you get separate feeds for each kind of stuff,probably ai categorization
XCSme 22 hours ago [-]
That's so cool. I would have expected for the domain to go for hundreds of thousands or millions, or, more likely, not not be purchasable for some reason. I can see a future where google.com is purchased for fun by some robot in 200 years.
butterlesstoast 20 hours ago [-]
I have the highest hopes for this. At the same time, I can’t help but be skeptical of the claims for no ads / no data selling lasting -forever-.
Build the platform, then find out how to make money on it later.
kgwxd 1 days ago [-]
Bought Friendster, posted about it on Medium. Can't wait for the Justin.tv live stream!
trueno 1 days ago [-]
lmao i cannot stand medium. the amount of articles i've clicked into on medium that start with
"in todays fast paced business environment.."
the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.
Who visits those long expired domains to generate ad revenue? People nostalgic? People who hear this Friendster thing and want to check out what they are doing now?
_ink_ 18 hours ago [-]
Right? And who clicks the popups? I have no clue about the economics of online ads, but my understanding is, it is cents per click. This would mean hundreds of thousands visits per year? Sounds like there are bots involved to me.
jeroenhd 16 hours ago [-]
There are loads of dead links hovering around on the internet, no doubt plenty of people (and bots convincing enough that advertisers still pay out) will accidentally end up on one of these domains, sigh at the annoying ad that interrupted what they were doing, and never return.
(The one from 3 days ago never made the frontpage so we won't treat it as a dupe)
1 days ago [-]
1 days ago [-]
acrinimiril 21 hours ago [-]
It would be cool to leverage this proximity requirement to build a GnuPG web of trust. The one year 'weakening' would also help keep the web strong.
NordStreamYacht 23 hours ago [-]
Off topic, kind of, but this was genuine and genuinely nice to read.
capitanazo77 22 hours ago [-]
We don’t need another company to hold our data and then change its mind later for the correct price.
Make the social network private, end to end encrypted, not harvested by your servers
wewewedxfgdf 19 hours ago [-]
The real social network has become WhatsApp - lots of small private groups with nothing in them but messages from people in the group.
opan 16 hours ago [-]
I don't use WhatsApp, but I've noticed a similar trend more generally. I've got several Matrix group chats with friends and family I regularly post in, a handful of small to medium IRC channels with internet friends I've talked to for years, etc. It feels like Twitter and Instagram and so on are a lot less personal now, just curated posts based on the algorithm, and lots of people who've decided they're comedians. I even will link an interesting post from a social media site in a group chat pretty often, but don't interact with the people from that chat on social media platforms themselves.
shumatsumonobu 23 hours ago [-]
The tap-to-connect constraint makes this work. Every social network removes friction; this one keeps it on purpose. Won't scale to billions, but maybe that's the point.
imrozim 19 hours ago [-]
Forcing phone tab to add friend is genius kills boots and fake account instantly every social network dies due to fake connections.
trueno 1 days ago [-]
i bought friendster for 30k, heres what it taught me about b2b sales
sottomail 19 hours ago [-]
Have you spent much time thinking about how the feed will work? Balancing the “quality” and enjoyment with the prioritization of “people you met in person”. I’m sure I’m far from the only one who misses the old Facebook feed, but curious what a modern take on that would look like.
type0 23 hours ago [-]
I haven't tried it but meeting functionality for smaller groups would be good, specially for different kinds of hobby meetups.
TZubiri 1 days ago [-]
Probably being pedantic, but this is not buying Friendster to be precise, usually what is meant by that is that the company was bought.
In this case the domain Friendster.com was bought, and a trademark was conceded (a new different trademark), I don't know precisely the implications of the trademark though, I think it's a different trademark and you still cannot imply that you are a continuation of the previous trademark holder, it's just that you are given monopoly over that word as a trademark.
Now, is that different than buying "Friendster"? A really interesting legal question, I think it is, and I think it has relevant implications, I don't think you can for example restore the website as it was and pretend a continuation as you would if you bought the company.
sikozu 1 days ago [-]
I think the distinction is warranted.
Honestly if the prior Friendster company itself was bought - including all the assets, codebase and historical documents (no user details) that would've been such an incredibly interesting read.
Buying the domain and getting the trademark is still cool, just not as cool.
TZubiri 23 hours ago [-]
fwiw, I think that subjectively it's roughly equivalent in this specific case. The domain name is a huge part of the brand, and is almost equivalent to the list of prior clients.
I think that it will probably be fine if they compete in the same space of a social network, doesn't look like someone is going to go after them, the company that would have a claim against them is defunct, so even if they have a legal argument, who would raise the case? If the owners do so under their personal name it's even a weaker argument.
So in practice, in this case, subjectively I believe that it's effectively very similar as buying the company.
Dave0X 7 hours ago [-]
Some people clearly believe if you have money sitting in a bank, other people should be able to take it. They feel your money should help others. If you're not actively using it.
rafram 6 hours ago [-]
That is generally how banks work, yes.
didip 19 hours ago [-]
I have to ask, what is the difference between this and private WhatsApp groups?
vladmk 23 hours ago [-]
Love it!!!
Businesses that have genuine passion like these are the ones that really blow up…or die :-)
xvxvx 1 days ago [-]
Well, this sounds sketchy as hell. Pass.
saltmate 18 hours ago [-]
I thought I was the only one immediately sceptical when I heard domains, without content, bought for multiple thousand dollars just for ad revenue? How does that even work, surely there cannot be lots of legitimate traffic for a site that shut down 10 years ago?
anshulbhide 15 hours ago [-]
I love the internet.
bigmadshoe 22 hours ago [-]
I had this exact app idea back in 2019, but never got around to building it. Nice work!
vidarh 1 days ago [-]
> Friendster was the first social network
Friendster was not the first social network.
sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.
elric 11 hours ago [-]
It all depends on how you define "social network". We had BBS and forums that operated much like "social networks" in the mid 90s. I don't think being "the first social network" is particularly interesting or noteworthy.
1970-01-01 1 days ago [-]
AOL has them beat by another 5. You need to go back to ARPA to find the first one. Social networks are just networks with humans at each end.
vidarh 18 hours ago [-]
That's not how the term is being used. Six Degrees had all the features we associate with a social network, such as profiles, and the ability to create connections.
1970-01-01 12 hours ago [-]
So AOL profile and friends
orbital-decay 24 hours ago [-]
Also LiveJournal, launched in 1999.
rc_kas 19 hours ago [-]
This will be the ONLY social media my kids are allowed to use.
mmclar 1 days ago [-]
Can you please make it (and keep it) so that friendships are symmetrical? I.e., "friend" rather than "follow". IMO that's the enshittification inflection point of Facebook.
Ferdinandpferd 1 days ago [-]
Or at least use proper terminology for following someone with reciprocity: stalking.
hoppyhoppy2 1 days ago [-]
do you mean "without reciprocity"?
esafak 22 hours ago [-]
One directional. They don't follow each other.
davidtio 17 hours ago [-]
I visit the side but I don't have handphone so it seems like I get DQ-ed immediately. If the apps works on web will be nice.
rileytg 24 hours ago [-]
app is snappy and solid. missing a “invite friends” link… i know the point is in person, i’m with two people in person but had to go back to app store to find a share link.
ca98am79 23 hours ago [-]
Thanks, good feedback
RF_Enthusiast 22 hours ago [-]
I think this might be as simple as a QR Code I can show to my friends!
coupdejarnac 18 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a good usecase for WebNFC.
drcongo 15 hours ago [-]
The tapping phones thing really limits the utility of this, and I suspect gives away something about the age of the author - as one gets older, friends move away from the place where you originally made friends, often all over the world. Given I'm not allowed to connect with most of my friends via friendster, there doesn't seem to be much point in creating an account.
daniel_iversen 24 hours ago [-]
Hi, congrats on the launch!
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).
Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)
UncleSlacky 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe you could get together with the SpaceHey guy:
Friendster is a damaged brand, but the marketing and recognition is there for free when it does do something, news outlets will likely give them more then 30k$ worth of advertisement.
aleken 19 hours ago [-]
This is an awesome idea!
ChrisMarshallNY 22 hours ago [-]
Good luck with this.
I run an iOS-only app that Serves a small, specific demographic (and is free. It does not generate any revenue). It’s been shipping for a bit over two years, and has just over 1,000 users. I seriously doubt it will ever get more than a couple of thousand (a rounding error, for most folks around here). I did test it with 12,000 users, so it should handle the anticipated load.
I am writing the 2.0 version, now. I think I’ll add the “tap to connect” feature, and probably QR codes, as well.
Azantys 18 hours ago [-]
+1 for an android app
rootsudo 20 hours ago [-]
Wow.
Yes.
Thank you!
homeonthemtn 24 hours ago [-]
Do we actually need social networks?
These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.
Plus it's not exposed to the public.
Fokamul 12 hours ago [-]
Most ridiculous part of the story -> You can still make money from ADs in 2026.
philipnee 1 days ago [-]
thanks for bringing it back!
mrsvanwinkle 10 hours ago [-]
Heya. At first I wanted to pile on the negativity due to really. Really bad red flags from the title alone signaling slop, sociopathy (calculated sensationalism), sociopathy (guiltless artificial scarcity peddler), and some really big "Gretchen stop trying to make Friendster 2 happen" energy. But as a longtime HN lurker who lost my first account and now have to carry the "account created after 2022" stigma when I had been training GPTs in my own slop in 2018, I value a storied post history pre-dead internet and it may be your best investment yet. (also you have shared positive posts about some things I like).
So just wanted to say I am rooting for you and I may be able to provide some acutely specific but embarrassing input(s) about how a Friendster 2 can happen, based on my Friendster 0 experience (it is definitely not about breaking up in high school where deleting profiles sends the news rippling to the whole universe) (it may involve learning that Indonesian black hats were scary and many and also how the social graph was uncached and always computed server side per profile visit). Now that you own the "Friendster" trademark, I hereby greenlight your soci-emdash-ability to manipulatively hint at the "possibility" of restoring profiles via the Friendster archive project, but keep it as a possibility until you big enough the patent trolls be phone tapping (this is really weird)
caust1c 20 hours ago [-]
> I’d like it to eventually pay for itself [...] — but that’s a problem for later.
Hard pass from me dawg. If you don't know the business model now, folks like me are tired of trusting their data to randos on the internet without a plan for sustainability. Guaranteed to end up being just another data farm.
Neat you got the domain tho.
faidit 22 hours ago [-]
this is awesome. godspeed. or should i say friendspeed
fifticon 14 hours ago [-]
hmm, I have no iphone.
jubilanti 23 hours ago [-]
> So I created an iOS app
CTRL-F "android" "linux" "git" 0 results
sigh
PLEASE if you are developing only for the Mac ecosystem, you should be required to put (Mac only) in your title so the rest of us don't completely WASTE our time.
dboreham 18 hours ago [-]
Interesting project. I bought the domain name for a startup I worked for in the early 2000s. It was just there to be bought from the regular registrar process -- no need to bid or pay more than a few $. This article makes me want to do something with it. I don't own the trademark.
petesergeant 19 hours ago [-]
I love the idea generally of creating a social network that's meant to not suck, but the whole tapping phones thing is bad. The major benefit of Instagram, for me, is that it allows me to maintain relationships with people I am unable to physically see for long periods. I don't need social media to stay in touch with people I am physically present with, I need it for bridging distances.
KPGv2 19 hours ago [-]
Pretty cool implementation, except when I read
> a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online
my skin crawled. I live a fulfilling, creative life. I'm married, have kids, the whole nine yards. My best friendships are with people I know almost entirely online, or haven't physically seen in years because we live on different continents.
I have little interest in most of the people I see regularly, because we're friends only because our kids are in the same classes.
LoganDark 22 hours ago [-]
> My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it. Websites like that genuinely change the course of people’s lives — people meet, fall in love, build families. That’s incredible to me.
> If Friendster helps even a few people find that kind of connection, it will have been worth it.
Did you tap phones for OkCupid? The type of network you are building does not work that way -- you will not build the same types of connections in-person as you can online. I hope it goes well, but it's not the same type of thing.
globalnode 1 days ago [-]
judging from what i hear people say. all you have to do is be able to display who's online from your friends list, and a chronologically ordered list of their posts. thats it. the major platforms are optimising for ads so much they cant even achieve this level of basic functionality
deadbabe 1 days ago [-]
Could you make it so you can have group chats but you can invite anyone you’ve tapped before and they can all talk together (but still not be able to talk outside the group chat)
ca98am79 1 days ago [-]
yes this is already included
ghstinda 23 hours ago [-]
can rename it botster
notaloner 20 hours ago [-]
>only way to make friends is actually make friends
Good luck to the app, but I'll never use this.
The overwhelming majority of people I know with whom I want to have long digital conversations with are also a minimum of 500 kilometers away from me.
DeathArrow 18 hours ago [-]
>Why I’m doing this
>My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it.
But OkCupid didn't require people to tap their phones together in order to be able to chat in the app.
yieldcrv 1 days ago [-]
on the fading connection and monetization - you could let people pay to re-up the connection from fading as opposed to meeting in person again first, and its makes them really think about whether meeting in person is worth happening again or would ever happen again, is the connection itself valuable in another way any way
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
RobotToaster 18 hours ago [-]
Honestly, nothing could make me trust yet another centralised and closed source social network.
jona-f 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
codingdave 12 hours ago [-]
Considering how little is actually interesting about the app aside from it using an old domain, my impression is that the entire post is just pseudo-marketing, attempting to encourage people to get back into domain name squatting.
camillomiller 11 hours ago [-]
Well this vibecoded chatgpt crap is quite clearly an attempt at making Friendster more valuable than 30k
kube-system 9 hours ago [-]
Domain squatting is when you buy a domain purely for speculation with no intent of using it.
This person has built something using the domain. They are not squatting it.
rafram 9 hours ago [-]
He founded a domain brokerage for squatters and seems to be squatting on other domains for ad revenue (read the section about the trade he made).
Dave0X 7 hours ago [-]
Domain registration for the purpose of resale is legit. Plenty of available names and extensions to choose from.
era-epoch 5 hours ago [-]
A thing can be both technically legitimate and also annoying and shitty.
aswegs8 9 hours ago [-]
Doesn't strike me as particularly immoral.
rafram 8 hours ago [-]
I don’t know about immoral, but it is at the very least a bit sleazy. When I look for domains for side projects, I very rarely have to abandon a name because it’s been taken by an actual operational service; it’s almost always because someone is squatting it with a “parking” page filled with sketchy ads that they’re paying almost nothing for. That isn’t doing any good for anyone besides the squatter.
Dave0X 7 hours ago [-]
Why does a practice have to do good for anyone other than the practioner?
rafram 7 hours ago [-]
Well, if we're discussing morality, it is generally considered immoral to enrich yourself at the expense of the public good.
sillysaurusx 5 hours ago [-]
But it’s not a public good. .com stands for commercial. It’s literally the opposite of a public good.
rafram 4 hours ago [-]
Allowing people to pay a fair price for the resources they need to start a business (rather than paying scalper prices to the bridge trolls who got there first) serves the public good. “For the public good” includes more than just feeding blind orphans.
4 hours ago [-]
cornhole 7 hours ago [-]
“chattel slavery isn’t bad so long as I am the slave owner”
acessoproibido 6 hours ago [-]
A bit strong to compare domain squatting with slavery don't you think?
estearum 8 hours ago [-]
yeah just like laying claim to the most fertile land in your region, doing nothing with it, and waiting until your neighbors are sufficiently desperate to sell it to them for gigantic markup
hugely value-added activity, and a well-earned increment.
PowerElectronix 8 hours ago [-]
Zero added value while getting a money inflow ticks my box for immoral.
bartread 6 hours ago [-]
Don’t forget parasitic.
A lot of the value of these domains stems from the popularity of sites they may have been attached to in the past, or search terms that relate to them.
So these people are literally making money off of the back of others’ work whilst providing no benefit themselves, probably not that much even to their advertisers.
Such squatting sites are, at best, an annoyance to web users as well.
cbsks 8 hours ago [-]
The one takeaway I got from my engineering ethics class in college was that everyone has different morals. Debating if something is “moral” or not is useless. Education on a subject is useful, but once someone understands your point of view and still thinks it’s within/outside their morals, there’s nothing more to discuss.
jona-f 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Dave0X 7 hours ago [-]
Many things should be illegal in a capitalist society. Domain investing is low in the list.
pavon 8 hours ago [-]
Agreed. The main problem with domain squatting and sniping is scammers either trying to impersonate another organization, or extort trademark owners into paying insane amount of money to obtain a domain which has no legitimate use to the current holder. Neither are happening here. Friendster intentionally let the domain and trademark go, and there isn't any entity that holds a legitimate claim to that name anymore.
I don't think that old business names should be "retired" and forever banned from use. After a certain amount of time the name should be free for someone to use again, and 10 years of non-use seems reasonable to me. The main concern with reuse is confusing consumers into thinking they are dealing with the old friendster, but I think consumers are savvy enough to realize that an old trademark rising from the dead often has nothing to do with the original, regardless of whether the current trademark holders purchased rights from the original, or claimed abandoned ones, as in this case.
His other business dealings aside, I don't have a problem with how he obtained/revived the friendster domain and trademark.
arthurgibson 11 hours ago [-]
A little over reaction here, they were very open about the process. Lets not take down the horse before the carriage. The article mentions they started "park.io" which was backordering domains, so at minimum expertise and some relevancy exists (was acquired).
Lets look at Friendster from a less foggier lense, its an attempt in the right direction. Use it or don't use it.
hacker161 10 hours ago [-]
Their reaction is perfectly proportional
ca98am79 12 hours ago [-]
Curious what you’d consider a better model for naming/ownership on the internet.
brynnbee 7 hours ago [-]
ICANN's main process for handling trademark-based complaints is the UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy). This policy is used for instances where someone claims you registered a domain in bad faith that matches their trademark, and they have a panel that looks at whether you have "rights or legitimate interests" in the name. Bad faith evaluations by this policy often involves intent to sell the domain to the trademark owner, disrupt their business, or attract users by confusion.
So the spirit of ICANN's philosophy around this is clear: we don't want people buying domains with the intent of withholding them and later profiting by selling them to trademark holders. I would argue that preemptively buying domains with the speculation that people will eventually want them and pay for them is basically a violation against the spirit of their policy, you're just operating in bad faith preemptively against any possible future owner rather than a current specific one.
Disputes around this are notoriously unsuccessful. I say all this context to get to the point that I think the current system would work fine if there were policies that included this style of preemptive squatting, and more of an ability to successfully dispute bad faith actors. Including by looking at: how many other domains does this person own and not meaningfully use, how much is the site a legitimate use versus asking ChatGPT to write 50 articles, and whether the effort or investment put into the site is proportional to a ballpark of the value of a domain name. With exceptions, perhaps, for situations like domains that are also your name.
I'm even fine with the idea that domains go to the highest bidder on fixed terms, like 5-10 years. Or that it will at least require good-faith evaluation after a fixed term. But it's a problem when that money goes to squatters instead of towards something useful, like funding infrastructure. Maybe we can have a non-profit version of Cloudflare.
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
I don't necessarily support any of these, but it's essentially a solved problem when discussing the supply side - especially for artificial scarcity:
* lots of jurisdictions have occupancy taxes on vacant real estate
* taxation rules differ depending on the source of income, ex: employment vs. investment
* going concerns are legally treated different than inactive entities
* qualitative usage can define treatment
* lots of internet-focused legislation provides for challenging "what" is being served
You would think this is all in Google's best interest, as the SEO of these low-value domains is a major threat when LLMs are very effective in displacing google searches.
Barbing 9 hours ago [-]
Wait people are upset, do the Friendster founders want their URL back?!
Maybe I glossed over something
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
I think it was more about how the OP talks about the backstory, and likely how they got the resources to do this.
phrotoma 11 hours ago [-]
IIUC it's not the model of buying domains from registrars which stinks of crap, it's the buying from registrars by domain squatters who then flip them for a profit having provided zero value that bears a whiff of shite. These ticket scalpers of the internet who contribute nothing can well and truly fuck straight off.
mothballed 9 hours ago [-]
Speculators provide time-allocation of resources. They're pretty critical part of market dynamics to help resources get sold and developed when they are valued most. That is, they prevent domains from being captured prematurely for lower value use. Society profits immensely from their contribution.
phrotoma 9 hours ago [-]
Hey I get it, we all gotta sleep at night. Tell yourself whatever you like to get them zzz's. As far as ticket scalpers and domain resellers go, my assessment stands: they are bottom feeding zeros providing nothing of value and they can fuck off into the sun.
zurfer 9 hours ago [-]
Down voted because the comment is not providing any new insights and is just insulting.
phrotoma 7 hours ago [-]
Upvoted because you're correct.
jyscao 7 hours ago [-]
Despite being full of arrogant intellectual superiority, evidently the majority of the HN crowd has little understanding of basic economics.
While I personally wouldn't go as far as "Society profits immensely from their contribution", these types business people do serve an important function in the economy.
Much like traditional middle-men sellers, commodity speculators, insurance providers, and the like, domain name re-sellers take on the risk that no one else are willing to bear at some particular time (that the domain they're "squatting" could be worth nothing in X years). If and when the domains they're "squatting" later on become more valuable, either through their own direct efforts, or by re-selling them to other parties that can make better use of them, then the profits they make from such transactions are justified for the aforementioned risks they bore.
jgeada 6 hours ago [-]
What risk? They contributed nothing, they have performed no function. Their only claim on it is having been first on the dictionary attack and laid claim to a bunch of useful letter combinations without providing any value or service.
If they didn't do any of this that combination of letters doesn't disappear, it just goes back to being available from the primary registrars.
The squatters are just vacuuming up some of the profit off people that would/could use that combination of letters to actually provide a service.
I don't view middle man parasitic behavior as valuable, and see no market value performed here other than extraction.
jyscao 6 hours ago [-]
>I don't view middle man parasitic behavior as valuable, and see no market value performed here other than extraction.
Seeing middlemen businesses as "parasitic behavior" is a common misunderstanding of their role in the economy. They make possible commercial transactions between initial producers and ultimate end-consumers, where and/or when such transactions could never have taken place affordably without their presence.
jgeada 5 hours ago [-]
Except in this case the middleman added thousands of dollars to the cost without adding anything of value: not curation, not discovery, nothing. Without this middleman acquiring an expired domain would have been whatever the nominal registrar cost (somewhere between $10 to $100 or so per year for a domain)
Useful middlemen do serve a role and add value. A parasitic middleman just extracts value without adding any value anything in return.
oefrha 10 hours ago [-]
You don’t need to propose a better model of the world to despise the dirtbags profiting from legal but icky shit in this world.
wussboy 10 hours ago [-]
I don't need to be able to cure cancer to tell you that cancer is terrible.
hacker161 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
10 hours ago [-]
jona-f 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 4 hours ago [-]
You broke the site guidelines badly in this thread by posting much too aggressively and crossing into personal attack. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it on HN.
We must have read a different article because I read a neat one about how someone bought a domain no one was using.
fsckboy 8 hours ago [-]
an article about a new app is an article about a new app, even if self promotional.
an article that spends most of its time talking about the sunshine and roses of purchasing domains from a domain squatter, even if you are a domain squatter, is an article about domain squatting.
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
it WAS being used for what I hope we can all agree is a very low value use that generated significant revenues by essentially tricking people to visit. That's the morality question here. Maybe it speaks to the bigger, general question of "do the ends justify the means?"
_vertigo 9 hours ago [-]
It’s just an externality of online advertising
estearum 8 hours ago [-]
There should be a land value tax on domain names
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
there sort of is; you don't own a domain but lease it. The problem is all domains for a given TLD cost the same. What about the registration fee being a % of the value, where value is set to the current cost, but then assessed on the sales price? Or do we just end up with the scenario we're currently escaping with TM resale tickets?
Dave0X 7 hours ago [-]
This comment sounds like entitlement and anti-capitalist.
i386 11 hours ago [-]
I kinda fucking love it. He’s doing something. It’s interesting. There’s no scam. Let live!
chneu 9 hours ago [-]
This is such a wild over reaction.
There is nothing inherently wrong with domain squatting. Lol. Blame the system, not the people operating within it.
timedude 9 hours ago [-]
The people operating in it are the system.
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
This is such a dumb response. The people playing the squat & resale game are the ones that built and maintain the system. This is like saying spam & phishing is the fault of the people who built email, not the jerks who exploit it. It's wrong because it extracts money from the commons without adding any value; i.e. this is why we can't have nice things.
agentbc9000 15 hours ago [-]
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breezywheezy 1 days ago [-]
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JumpCrisscross 1 days ago [-]
> $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue
That's...a good deal? Assuming even 50% margins, that's a solid yield.
breezywheezy 19 hours ago [-]
It’s nothing of value buying nothing of value. If you only see dollars and not the utter nonsense you’re either young or not very bright.
16 hours ago [-]
JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago [-]
> It’s nothing of value buying nothing of value
Doesn’t that make it fine? If I trade three acorns for a crayon drawing of a squirrel, that’s a nothing burger. If I bought those three acorns for a million dollars, then someone might have a legitimate gripe with my choices.
psychoslave 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tomhow 15 hours ago [-]
Please don't post generic ideological sermons on HN. Sure, any money anyone ever spends or invests could arguably be put to better use. It’s a jerk move to bring it up in a tangential context like this. We have no idea what kind of charitable/benevolent work or giving this person does, or what they may plan to do in the future with any gains they make from this or other investments. It's not fair to post this kind of condemnation based on knowing very little about them, and it's against the guidelines to engage in ideological battle or introduce generic tangents.
Promoting auto-censure is also falling in ideological sermons, so this is going nowhere consistent. Only in illusion can one think to stand on apolitical and ideological-less point of view.
There is a rating system, and it’s fine some posts goes down to oblivion if it doesn’t fit the majority mindset of voting users.
It’s true what’s this person is doing on charitable/benevolent work is unknown, and the post anticipated this scenario and did express appreciation if that was the case.
Plus, calling for a step back to think about one own actions on their own terms, that’s not what we could categorize a harsh condemnation.
Favoring closed information bubbles, void of any critical thought is doing no one a favor.
tomhow 2 hours ago [-]
The guidelines apply no matter the topic; if it weren't that way, there'd be no point having them. We're here for curious conversation. Curmudgeonliness, fulmination and generic tangents are specifically off-limits here, and berating someone over personal, lawful investment decisions breaks the first rule of HN comments, which is to “be kind”.
northernsausage 15 hours ago [-]
In a world where I am trying to use my phone much less due to ingress of tracking, destroying my mind etc having a social media where its required is a bit of a no-no for me tbh. Additionally I feel like this puts more friction on those of us that are shy and weird, for us the internet and online places are where we can be ourselves. I wouldn't ask you if I could follow you on Twitter, I'd just do it because I find your stuff interesting. Putting a hurdle in the way of connection might sound daft but is enough for many not to use it or miss-connections.
For me the special sauce that's been taken away from SM is just seeing my friends stuff, I want to see your dog with out it having to be a 2min video with onscreen graphics, SEO keyword optimisation in the post title and brand tags. Show me your fluffy dog updates, just dont force me to ask you about it first.
> So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of the domain name friendster.com.
I don't know anything about how to project future ad revenue of a domain, but would this be likely to be valued at only $10,000? Unless I'm misremembering my limits, even if it made $4,500 next year and continued to cut in half every year after that, it would still account for $9,000 of revenue projecting indefinitely into the future, even bumping that up to something like 60% of the previous year's revenue it would already put it at more than $10,000 (although I don't know whether ad revenue tends to scale with inflation or not; my instinct is that the prices of ads probably would roughly increase with inflation over time)?
I know I'm nitpicking a bit about the title, but I can't help but actually be curious now that I thought of this.
So I think it would be more accurate to say, "I purchased the site in a deal through assets valued at about $42k, total."
[edit: updated the comment as I got confused about the thing being exchanged - it's a site the guy created that he transferred to make the sale]
In particular, if someone on the internet tells me they’re making $x a month from spammy ads on a squatted domain, I immediately discount the claim substantially due to bullshit. I increase the discount rate if the person making the claim is trying to sell me said domain.
Enough to be motivated to proceed with due diligence.
Whatever any potential buyer considers that to mean for them.
How much are you trying to sell the domain for?
Uhh...about $100k.
That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)
Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford
At what multiple would you be comfortable considering selling? If revenue has dropped 85% from its peak, have you identified the cause of the drop? Has it been steady that past five years? Do you have a record of the time spent on it, or does it just feel minimal? How much of revenue is from ads vs subscriptions? Is it sticky mainly because a user can’t export things and import them to Google Calendar or something?
Is it custom software, heavily customized software, or are you basically selling the calendaring component of something like Citadel or Horde? What languages are in use? Does the buyer get just the site or full ownership of the codebase and the rights to derive new products and services from it? Does it come with the domain and trademarks?
Are you selling outright, or are you reserving some royalty for yourself?
What does the handover look like? Does the buyer just get an email with URLs and login credentials, or do you plan on familiarizing a buyer with the whole thing?
The original goal was to aggregate all these local events into a single searchable index and serve up local ads alongside. I never really got that part to take off, though I did get a very early patent for local search on the web. Since then, calendaring libs have come along which allowed many site-builder tools to offer a built-in solution.
The primary reasons for declines are 0) Not as many people build raw sites anymore; people migrate to things like Wordpress or Wix) 1) Google showing less profitable ads and 2) Webmasters w/ a popular site can remove ads via a subscription (which are drastically underpriced; some are still on a legacy $9.95/year). Everything is exportable (and importable) via iCal if desired. Buyer gets everything, w/ no residual royalties to me. I'd have to have an active role in the handover since it's all bespoke code. The buyer would need some level of Java+T-SQL since I don't want to teach coding from scratch.
I love my users and many rely heavily on the site - it's meant to be very simple to use and I tend to draw an older demographic that doesn't need a lot of fancy bells and whistles. 26+ years is a lot of time and I don't have the passion for it I used to. I had a recent health issue and my wife is concerned that she wouldn't know how to close this out gracefully if the worst ever happened.
The buyer takes on substantial risk because it's easy to fake the numbers, and google updates can tank the site at any time.
Also, most sites will require maintenance/upkeep to keep earning, or they can tank quick. Even if they have got evergreen content, without updates google might drop their search ranking.
You can’t just send tens of thousands of emails via your typical email service.
Also, even if it were making about $9k/year in profits, if that comes with large costs (be it labor or dollars), it still might not be worth it. Let’s say it costs $100k a year to keep that site making $9k in profits. That would be 9% return on investment. Good but not spectacular. Add in uncertainty about whether that site will keep doing that, and I can see such a domain not being worth much.
That's not investment, that's just the cost of upkeep. It's possible you simply cannot afford to keep up with that expense rate, but the fact remains that it's net profit. With a $100k investment and a yearly $9k profit, if you stop at the first year you lost $91k. With a yearly $100k cost and a yearly $9k profit, if you stop at the first year you earned $9k. No matter how you slice it it's a money-printing machine. The question is much it cost you to buy the machine, not how much it costs you to run it, because you'd be a fool to turn it off.
For a moment I thought maybe the app was US exclusive or something and not available in my region.
But following the link from the post worked fine and I could install it.
I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
Anyway, installed the app finally thanks to the link.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/friendster/id6760240416
The first result is a sponsored result, and even after Friendster is indexed, if they don't pay apple's extortion-rate, the first result will still be for some other social media app.
Ads in the app store are malicious. There are people who have searched "Ledger bitcoin wallet", clicked the first link (a malicious app who paid apple enough money to be 'sponsored' for that search), and had all their money stolen.
My workplace does this to our customers too, where you get worse-than-plaintext-search effectiveness, and I guess it must be profitable enough conning the customer to waste our time as well, as we use the same interface for a lot of customer questions.
"SEO is a $100 billion industry" = your opponents have a 12 figure war budget.
You can search apps by their exact name, identifier, anything, and App Store will not find them for day+.
How do I build an app for my iPhone locally and run it without ever connecting to their servers? I can do that for my phone running linux or for my phone running android, but on iOS I have to get signed by their servers to run code I wrote.
Linux respects my freedom to have my data exist locally, to build and run open source apps, and to modify the code on the devices I run.
Apple does not. They don't let me use their ecosystem from Linux, they do not let me patch the iOS kernel and run a modified version on the devices I run, I can't even access the source code for the macOS kernel.
Apple's filesystem abstraction and lack of something like android "intents" also makes it wildly difficult to do "local-first" computing where files are shared between apps cleanly.
People like iPhones and MacBooks, not Pages or Numbers.
App Store search is fucked. Hilariously, Apple is at least non-discriminatory - try searching for any Apple app, and they will also be (at best) in the second slot after "sponsored" crap.
Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site
If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.
See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"
Do I want my teens on any social media apps? No.
Would I let them be on Facebook of 2006, when you were just connected to your friends and family, and not influencers and "the algorithm?" Sure! That and early Instagram were great ways to keep up with real-life friends.
If you made this as easy and pleasant to scroll through as 2011 Instagram was, with only-real friends allowed, I might even return to social media myself. It would beat having to WhatsApp my family my vacation photos.
(And heck, if this got big enough that celebrities were bumping phones with fans, heck, at least that's a more intentional connection than Insta forcing the latest wellness guru on my teen girl.)
It’s of course more friction, which in itself is good to avoid spam/bots, but over time all of that can very likely be automated
> [...] would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them.
Easy to do, easy to implement but hard to bypass. Also it tells me something about the network that is not vying for a slice of the attention economy and isn't going to do everything it can to keep me on the site.
But it wouldn't actually work well. It doesn't even need physical invites, keeping track of the invite graph is a great way to kick scammers out. It works. It's been demonstrated to work well since at least 2004.
The reason social media sites don't do it is not that it doesn't work - it's that growth trumps those concerns. Making onboarding as easy as possible is more important than keeping scammers out.
Optimizing for time spent on the platform is exactly what results in the current social platforms. The idea that the platform itself should be appealing and not a tool to connect with each others is in itself toxic IMHO
Visits are great and all, but they require money and planning with more than one person. And I'm lucky - I can travel. Some folks can't go home - war sucks, poverty sucks, sickness sucks, busy work times suck, etc. If I were still in the US, I might not even get a chunk of time off work.
Travel is probably getting a little less likely considering the current situation with jet fuel as well.
But taking a photo (possibly a group photo) is a more natural way to do that. Maybe it should integrate with photo-taking somehow?
It would be annoying if you met up, forgot to do the ritual in person, and had no way to fix it.
https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing
But that only works if the social network has enough privacy safeguards that sharing personal photos on it makes sense. Maybe the network just shares the photos encrypted?
And if you can't share photos with your friends on it, it seems kind of limited as social networks go?
I think you're likely of a generation that's attached to the Facebook model where a social network is an ever-growing photobook/history of interactions with all your friends. Maybe that has a place, but I think it's worth being open to other ideas. And yes, maybe when someone dies, they're no longer part of this network in the same way they are no longer part of many other things in your life. I don't think that's inherently bad.
Either way, you badly mischaracterize generational differences in grieving and digital life. Gen Z and younger millenials are vastly more inclined towards memorialization of deceased loved ones and (physically & digitally) archiving their content than any generation. See also the uptrending of stated preference in burials over cremations in the same generation. There are many reasons for this but at least in part it is probably a reaction to the ephemeralization of both digital and physical life.
Also, my post was largely motivated by how OP brands their product. From their app store page and the blog post, it seems they will support photos, longer form content, and DMs. In such a setting, ephemerality needs to be in your face, otherwise you are setting up users for unpleasant surprises. It's common sense.
That 'tapping phones' could also be used to facilitate key exchange verification, making that chore technically useful.
Then again, that would be better done in an open-source app and not tied to any particular domain.
For me, I already know what the handful of people who live in my little town are doing. I see them all the time. An app like this is for keeping up for the rest of my friends who live out of town and I might only see in person every few years.
You could say the same thing about leaving the house.
Maybe we should have a little more of this annoying but ultimately healthy kind of friction in our lives.
- It had to be an app because the web NFC API[0] only allows a browser to act as an NFC reader rather than emulate an NFC card. Nothing stopping other functionality outside of the tap-to-connect working in a browser of course.
- Permissions to act as an NFC card were fairly easy to set up on Android, but needed specific developer permissions for Apple[1], which had to be applied for[2][3].
Worth also noting that other proximity techniques such as QR scanning and geolocation are much more easily spoofed than NFC, making them much less useful as a proof-of-human validation.
[0] https://w3c-cg.github.io/web-nfc/
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/cardsessio...
[2] https://developer.apple.com/support/nfc-se-platform/
[3] https://developer.apple.com/support/hce-transactions-in-apps...
I suppose getting special "NFC card" permissions when they already struggled to get the app in the store would have been a bit much.
It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.
The tapping phones feature wouldn't allow me to do this.
I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a friend so they can take a photo and then download it, and immediately connect us, would be huge.
Do you have any kind of development plan for new features?
If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.
I'd have a hard time getting over my aversion to this. I automatically reject any app's attempt to find local devices, etc.
Camera, and point it at their changing screen (or both at the same scene at the same moment). Not too intrusive.
GPS, but that would require location permission. Intrusive.
Audio, but that would require allowing microphone. Intrusive.
We tested it one time with like 10 phones and everyone bumping each other / the wall as a control, in the same room and it nailed every actual pairing and ignored the others. The wiki has more, but lacks the subjective experience of how magic it was.
It works in isolation and fails miserably when trying to do a big demo of it in a conference talk when attempted by dozens of people in the same room.
https://blog.bu.mp/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
Cool project. Have fun!
I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a quarter of the time, and PWA about 10% of the time. That’s across all users, including desktop, so the PWA actually had an unfair advantage.
People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs, especially for social media.
Such a conclusion cannot reasonably be made from the data you have presented. It merely means that your web app was not preferred over your native app.
https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/07/23/11/newFile-3.jpg
and not like this, anymore:
https://headlineplanet.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/M...
A user on a app is more valuable since you get a lot more data on them, and can stop their ad blockers.
> They probably dont know the difference between an app rendered with a browser or a truly native app.
Absolutely, users do not know or care what technology you are using so long as it meets their expectations of use. Users are going to the app store as a discovery mechanism for "something that gives them an icon on the phone to get to that thing", most have no clue what "native code" means.
But yeah, that comment is a bit disconnected to majority of the population.
Mentioning it here, though, tends to get pushback from folks that write Web apps. They don’t want to admit that native apps have more capabilities than Web apps; even if that’s a bad thing, because of security risks.
Misses the point completely. The entire idea is that this enforces in-person meetings, which QR codes do not.
Maybe if there's a "celebrity" that displays it on a live stream, that's a bigger issue, but there could be other mechanisms to dissuade this behaviour. Perhaps you could only add one friend with one QR code.
You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
I looked into this a while ago and I'm pretty sure that there are hundreds of these services and even ones you can host yourself. No idea how well they work though.
I guess in today's age you would just schedule an agent to check the website every day.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47627269
Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):
Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)
Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.
Thank you for keeping it not evil!
If you want a business model, require payment for long-term subscriptions or large celebrity/news accounts, but you have to overcome the network effect first. Maybe have a dozen or so permanent connections to start with, like MySpace's 8 priority friends.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
You hit me right in the gut, are we long lost siblings? Lol
Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel webOS was a lost opportunity too - in some ways it was just too ambitious for the hardware of its time.
I was one of two non-MSFT I knew of that had one.. and I bought it because an MSFT employee was showing it off and I was convinced. The concept of Tiles was great and Cortana was respectable. It felt comparable to Siri and way better than Google.
I used it for a couple years until the apps I needed started disappearing due to lack of updates.
WebOS needed WASM and a lot more to be successful. I think WASM/WASI is to the point that the next major platform build out can use it.
I loved Google+ - it was like Facebook without the dark patterns. So of course, nobody was on it (which I didn't dislike exactly).
opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform
they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
Dowsing a user's circles from their public information and Gmail inbox seems like a perfect task for AI.
Self-defining all of the semantic grouping metadata was too much onus on the user.
Not everybody has the patience to curate and groom their social circle labels and memberships. That feels like a full time job.
I spent way too much time stressing over how to define my "circles". It was not a good experience.
Facebook now has 'Audience', which is quite analogous to 'Circles'
They did this before having notification control or usable filtering[1] so what this meant was for most of year, you'd login to Gmail and see the upper right notification badge be !!!LOOK AT ME!!! red only to click on it and see it was telling you that some dude who no-showed on a Craigslist sale 10 years ago in a different city had been forced to “join” Google+. Even worse, it took like 6 months for their iOS developers to give you any control over push notifications so you got all of that as push notifications until you deleted the app.
They also annoyed key communities like Google Reader users: that wasn't their largest popular social network but it was one which people actually liked and it disproportionately skewed towards people like journalists, bloggers, etc. who recommended technology to other people. The conversion to Google+ was really clumsy and they did things like replacing the popular Reader commenting system with a Google+ “integration” which didn't work at all on mobile devices[2], which meant that a ton of influential people had a really negative experience and told everyone they knew about it.
1. The “circles” idea reportedly worked well when it was Google employees using it internally but it relied on the poster picking an audience for a post, which failed in the real world when the spammiest people think everyone is interested in their every word.
2. The dialog was sized for a desktop display so the post button was inaccessible off the screen.
That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political.
X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off.
I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network complaining about politics, polarized attacks, etc.
My point is normal people who aren't extremely online and part of 10 Discord servers with an internet friend network who can hook them up with an invite didn't get into Bluesky. Instead the people who, well, did, got the invites. Obviously the extremely online right didn't because they had other places to go and weren't welcomed by the bsky admins.
The system was invite-based, meaning these people invited their friends. And those people invited their friends of friends.
The community was seeded by a very political base at its inception. The general feed the average user saw when opening the app was activist-political, furry art, dildos, and outrage. This continued for a year, I think?
This is not very welcoming to a general audience, and it severely knee-capped Bluesky's growth trajectory.
Here's the front page of Bluesky for a new user today:
https://imgur.com/a/QzBdust
But really, it's that Twitter shifted hard-right to literal Nazism, and so people left. Which is completely understandable.
At no point did I make this claim. Bluesky's user base self selected for left wing viewpoints because Twitter had taken a hard right turn and Bluesky, mostly by way of moderation, was unwelcoming to the right wing. So left leaning people had a reason to leave Twitter and a friendly platform. Right wing people had no reason to leave Twitter and a hostile platform with Bluesky.
It's really not. It's where everyone is right now. The Trots and Maoists. The demsoc local politicians. The vegan militant organizers. Etc. You can also include whatever shitty group you want to cherry pick to make your disingenuous ass argument. And when you do, post it to Bluesky where people can get a dopamine rush with you as they shake their heads and smile and post how horrible it is.
Care to actually refute my point instead of saying “nuh uh” and lobbing some childish insults my way?
Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
This is a weird comment because it treats connections like they're only an asset for the person being followed.
The people doing the following aren't even considered. They're supposed to continuously re-follow the people they want to follow?
I don't see any upsides to this for anyone. I'm not reading social media every day. I don't want the network to automatically expire my follows and force me to remember and re-discover who I want to follow all the time. I don't want the people I follow feeling like they desperately need to pursue relevance instead of just being themselves.
If Selena Gomez is "socially irrelevant" then why do you care that she has 400 million followers? What does this take away from you in any way?
That's more work than even following someone, because it asks for confirmation or pops up a separate modal to unfollow, which it doesn't do for following someone. And so I don't even bother.
This leads to stale social networks and algorithmic timelines.
What does this mean? Like in practical feature terms and benefit to the end user?
Your system kills the social networks ability to act as someone's modern day rolodex of contact information of previous acquaintances. What do they get in exchange for that?
An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
I agree with you, I don't even think that needs to be argued, we without a doubt hate forgetting things, but we also hate eating our vegetables. We do hate a lot of things we probably shouldn't. We are perpetual hoarders, as a species we have the bad habit that we're not very grateful for the problems we don't have as a consequence of things we don't keep. We're not very good thinking in terms of absence.
That's why Marie Kondo sold a ton of books and got a great Netflix deal simply by teaching people how to throw stuff into the garbage. Civilization is great at record keeping but not doing too well on the social bonding front, or in the words of George Carlin: https://youtu.be/MvgN5gCuLac
Did that weird guy from 3rd grade show up? He sure did.
I know this wasn’t the point I was supposed to take from your comment but I’m liking this idea
The lesson here is not to invite your whole friend list.
Maybe the lesson is to curate your friend list and don’t keep as a “friend” anyone you wouldn’t want to hang out with in person.
Persistent irrelevant celebrities are a real thing, but those two wouldn’t crack the top 500.
The signals are working as intended. More people will know Kim K than Sweeney because Kim K is more popular and has had more time to be more popular.
why am i talking about kim k on hn lol
Having fading connections equates relevance with popularity.
Pretty sure she founded or runs skims? She's Armenian, daughter of a famous lawyer in LA. Kanye. Sex tape. Early with the reality tv. I too did not seek out any of this knowledge!
Most just be a generational thing. Sweeney is still baking. She's actress from euphoria of which i didn't watch. That's about as much as i know. and the jeans ad controversy.
You can be married to each other and your posts won't show up on the other person's feed (there's a post on HN about this)
- For you: Fully algorithmic, shows stuff even from people you don't follow
- Following (recently): Chronological posts from people you follow
- Following (popular): Algorithmic ordering just from people you follow
Is this an alternate front-end (Nitter) or shorthand for X/Twitter?
In that sense, maybe this is Facebook doing its part for domestic harmony…
If you're going to move fast and break things and connect the world full steam ahead (and damn the consequences like what happened in Myanmar) your platform better be absolutely rock solid but Facebook doesn't even do that. Its implementation of 'connection' is laughable
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16278631
I'm pretty sure there was a Black Mirror episode about social scoring dictating peoples value/relevance. That was a good place for such a concept, because letting social media sites dictate someone's relevance is just weird. Relevance is a personal opinion, and should remain that way. People are free to stop following others. It works, and isn't dystopian.
Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it.
400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez relevant” and it responded with essentially “more in 2026 than ever.”
You're of course welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And thus ensured your social network won't have 72% of the world on it... And locally for anyone outside the USA, a far higher percentage.
I have this guy whom I used to be in touch with but now we meet every seven years randomly - happened two times already in completely different places and we're due for a meeting this year.
I would rather maintain this connection, because it's always fascinating to catch up after years.
This is why we need laws regulating mobile platforms. Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you use your phone for, or what apps you can give to your users. Doesn't work that way for PCs, shouldn't work that way for computers in your pocket.
To request unlisted distribution for your app, send it for review as usual, then file a special form [1], and mention that in the review notes.
Source: I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school. Its audience is, indeed, not of Apple scale: the school parents living nearby. Apple refused it as 4.2 and only agreed to publish it as unlisted, which I was okay with, because sharing the link between the parents was not a big deal. Google had no problems with publishing the Android app normally though.
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/support/unlisted-app-distributio...
Why would you not just make this a webpage, and then the users could add it to home page as if it were an app? no Apple review necessary then. What does it being an app give you besides bureaucratic headaches?
2. Those people and many more besides have no idea what "add it to home page" even means.
It being an app gives those people an experience that matches their normal use of technology, and I think they're probably a majority of users.
Plus, if the parent feels like making an app instead of a web page, who is Apple (or you, or I) to discourage that?
If Apple supported the beforeinstallprompt event (available in Chrome since 2015) then people would have same experience as installing app [0]. Instead, you must create a wrapper around webpage and submit thru App Store.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo...
There is a web version (it's Flutter so it was easy to make one), but parents use the app much more often.
Source: consulted for a company that had a PWA and paid me a lot of money to make it a native app because their users didn't know how to use the PWA.
Also, in the EU it just opens the site up in your browser, no lack of browser UI like you'd expect. Apple is wonderful.
Edit: It seems I never got the news they reversed course on that particular idea of theirs.
Your point about users not being used to this is very real. I didn’t know you could until some app author showed me.
It really is as simple as sharing a link or copy-pasting, but if you don’t know it’s a think, it disappears into obscurity in the menus.
There's still this funny business: https://developer.apple.com/support/alt-distribution-ux-in-t... & https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu
Unfortunately some other features are only available to PWA do it's a tradeoff either way.
No url bar, no back/forward, no tabs, nor translation, no menu bar, no loading indicator, just… pressing down on a link shows the target url and offers open, copy link, add to reading list and share -which honestly looks like a weird oversight.
It’s not a PWA because the UX is just always inferior. Even though we’ve come really far in browser UIs, the browser is still very clunky compared to the smoothness of a native app.
And I like nice to use software.
However, I'm completely blocked by Apple app store review. There's no way an app designed for 30 people would pass.
I can't get an internal app onto people's phone. I could release it as a test app but that might get blocked at any point.
I can at least release a PWA but as I understand even that might get notifications blocked at any point, with no recourse, and of course functionality is highly limited.
So the goal here is clear: don't allow people to write small apps.
Apple can then make sure they are only allowing apps that required enough work, both initially and ongoing, that nearly everyone will feel the need to charge, or include ads, and then Apple gets a 30% cut every time.
As for why a car company's app passes, obviously they don't want anyone with enough power to challenge this in court, politically, or in the media. So those get a pass.
Don’t know how known this is. But we use it mainly for internal testing.
> The Apple Developer Enterprise Program allows large organizations to develop and deploy proprietary, internal-use apps to their employees
> Your organization must:
> Have 100 or more employees
Again, it's clear that they're providing this out so that organizations with power don't have to start a fight, while small organizations can't do anything.
Even aside from that, it's clearly going to be so much work that we wouldn't be able to do it. I'm the only developer at the company, I cannot get bogged down in Apple review processes.
[1] - https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/
I get it that people want more freedom from their iPhones but the thing about consumer devices is that they are an expression of a certain philosophy of how computers should work. Being a walled garden is one such approach. If you don’t agree with how a device operates on principle, you should not buy it—there’s Android or derivatives. You’re also likely to be a power user who’s in an incredible small minority because iPhone sales keep getting better every year and the walled garden approach has market (as in free market) validation.
Now, if your objective is to regulate monopolies, I think that the policing should happen in the supply chain and production side instead of the consumer software side. You don’t have more options than iPhone and Android because big players like Apple and Samsung have captured manufacturing facilities with long-term exclusivity contracts, making innovation in the space prohibitively expensive. But the law shouldn’t dictate what sort of computer innovators are allowed to build.
They already do, one of the reasons it's so hard to make a smartphone is all the FCC regulations on radios.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
People are becoming more aware that they don’t want a corporation in control over this essential near ubiquitous technology.
I see no good reason to follow a “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want” mindset
Are other competitors banned where you live?
The guiding principle should continue to be that manufacturers and retailers don't get to control the second hand market or dictate what users do with the things they purchase. Digital controls used to thwart the owner's freedom should be outlawed.
Absolute, unmitigated bullshit. You are not forced to buy an iPhone by anyone, ever.
> “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want”
Then perhaps you should make the absolutely tiny mental leap to "And I don't have to buy if it doesn't work the way I want it to."
Apple has 32% market share - pretending you don't have any other choice is utterly fallacious nonsense.
The truth is there are two reasonable platforms, as long as that is the case we should apply scrutiny.
An absurdly dishonest comparison. Which you (hopefully) knew when you made it.
Even more comparable is postal rules: at least here, there are very explicit rules about opening someone else's mail, or even destroying it. Even if postal/courier services are businesses, they have to operate within the boundaries a society sets up for them.
And finally, you can take it even further: some "businesses" operate on the fringes of legality and sometimes illegally too (think loan shark operations, casinos, betting markets... but also "protection services" and similar).
There are standards for interoperability and user-friendliness with all kinds of devices, and we should expect the same from modern devices.
It would have been pretty peculiar and unacceptable if your telephone in the 80s couldn't call your neighbour because the telephone company just decided to not make them interoperable, why shouldn't it be the same here?
(The only exceptions are government-granted monopolies.)
The future is one where everyone can, theoretically, install anything they want, but they get banned from everything should they actually do so. Rooted system? Attestation fails. "Oh no, looks like someone tampered with the system". Can't access your bank account. Can't communicate via WhatsApp. Can't watch something on the streaming services. Can't even play video games.
Discrimination against "untrustworthy" devices, where "untrustworthy" means not corporate owned. Leading to complete ostracization.
We just need to raise the profile of GrapheneOS and convince more banking apps to use this API, if they are already using Google's attestation API.
GrapheneOS's strategy for raising their profile and being seen as more legitimate is that they've formed a partnership with Motorola Mobility, who will be manufacturing Graphene compatible phones. <https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at...>
Corporations don't use such things for technical reasons. Their reasons are political. They want control. The "security" they talk about isn't the user's security, it's their own security from the user.
> We just need to raise the profile of GrapheneOS and convince more banking apps to use this API
And until they do, GrapheneOS is permanently at risk of being shut out of the market.
And even if they do, it just means we've become dependent on GrapheneOS. They won't trust our keys, only those of corporations. Our freedom is still compromised.
(Technically besides the point, but that is a broad statement)
I totally agree that should be swappable, but what is your point? Apple doesn't even allow installing stuff outside their store in most places, and had to be legally forced to do it in some because of how ridiculous that obviously is (thanks, EU!). And even there they still have some control with their notarization process. Android is wildly more open in major, meaningful ways, despite some failures.
OK.
Isn’t it insane that Apple refuses for an app to be listed on the App Store if it is intended to be niche? If true that’s pretty shocking
They don’t want the App Store filled with app that can’t be used by the vast majority of people that might see and download it.
Yeah, but that wouldn't be an option for this app obviously.
> They don’t want the App Store filled with app that can’t be used by the vast majority of people that might see and download it.
Then they should add alternative methods. Instead they are actively sabotaging such efforts, for example by the EU. Want to distribute an iOS app in the EU through the web? Yeah, as a requirement you need an app with 1m annual downloads[1] already in the AppStore before they allow you to do that. Which completely defeats the point.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/web-distribution-eu/
But with so many people vibe-coding apps, I do think it'd be good if Apple simplified the experience for non-developers. I made a stupid little rhythm game ("Headbang") this weekend that is controlled by AirPods head movement and I'd love to share it with two people and two people only. They would run it once and then never again.
Then again presumably there are plenty of organization specific apps that are also decidedly exclusionary
One of my very best friends lives in another country. We speak nearly every day, but I haven't seen them in person in over a year.
Another of my friends lives on the other side of the USA. We speak a few times a week, but I haven't seen them in person in about four years now. And that was only because their mom lived nearby. His mom moved, so it's unlikely we'll see each other except once a decade when we do our friends trip to Vegas.
I have other very close friends who I almost never see in person.
My point being, having to tap phones is cool and all but not a great measure of the strength of friendship.
I am convinced that this weird Phone Tapping thing may be the next evolutionary step from both social networks and the dead Internet theory (evolution not meant jokingly i.e. both naturally selected and the baby only got the recessive regressions).
The real solution hinges on maybe a future Turing award or Fields medal on physical cryptography for auth/integrity/privacy... but even without that. This is how Facebook got its "grassroots" userbase, from elite students verified via .edu email.
If a Friendster 2.0 actually doubles down on this physicality, and actually concentrate its efforts on making the very act of having to RE-TAP the physicality of a social connection, for example your friends may have an option to fund your trips to meet together if about to get disconnected.
Or of course it might end up being Facebook 2.0 and sell your Physical data to Cambridge Analytica 2.0 to make Grok beta emperor of Great North America CoProsperity Sphere
How is this any less awkward? "Oh do you have the new Friendster app?" "Friendster? Isn't that from the 1900s?" "No, the new Friendster, see you download it, register, then we bump phones...."
Maybe just because I'm an autistic introvert, but the idea of asking someone to exchange numbers is terrifying enough, but at least this is an almost universal social ritual that people understand implicitly. I ask if you want to keep in touch and exchange phone numbers. I do not need to explain literally anything else and the other person almost always knows what I mean, how to do it, and what thin social relationship that implies. And if they don't seem to understand or are hesitant, but are otherwise coherent and cogent, I take the message that they don't want to keep in touch.
Now add a new app to download (iPhone only), a new social network to register, a new social ritual... Are they being hesitant because this is a new app or because they don't actually want to keep in touch? No thanks.
But, my rule of thumb is you don't really need to worry about laws from places where they don't have real jurisdiction on you. If they filed suit, would you rather respond or make a note to never visit that place / would you be ok if all your users from there were blocked from contacting you by law?
[0]: in ancient times when server meant an actual server
This (EDIT: this app) is iOS only right now. And I hate the normalisation of giving websites access to Bluetooth and NFC.
The guy wants people to meet in person rather than doing social media the normie way.
For the record, the feature you describe was first introduced on Samsung phones 14 years ago - and later removed, likely after poor adoption. Because Apple "reinvented it", it's now planned to be reintroduced on Android too.
Starting a network effect product like a social network where you exclude half the social graph seems like... quite a decision.
I think a better alternative would be a phone number.
You only give your number to friends, which aligns with the brand and product concept.
Allows more of your friends to join via your address book, good for the app growth.
Might also mean indirectly you can’t follow a non-personal page which also aligns to the brand and product concept.
* Tapping Phones * Confirming Phone Number * Confirming Email * Connected via Other Platforms (Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, etc)
As far as maintaining a friendship by tapping phones, again, I would make the friendships a constant and graph / rank intimacy by how often you tap phones as well as how connected you are to your friend (phone, email, connections on other networks).
I'd make it so you could tap a phone, you know their phone number, you know their email. Importantly in my eyes, you shouldn't be able to navigate to a profile and just ask to connect as that'd mean you could do that to people you don't actually know (whereby knowing is inferred by you knowing some amount of their personal info such as tap, phone, email).
I'd stay away from your last option of 'other platforms', per my other reply below in that those platforms allow you to connect to anyone/anything. There is nothing in them that say this connection is inherently personal vs being generic.
The intimacy levels can be IRL (when you tap phones), Phone (when you friend via phone number) and Email (when you friend via email address). You could also measure the intimacy hierarchy / rank by keeping track of events (should events become a feature) you attend with other friends.
Why people automatically think that social media should be like facebook and you should be global entity with billions of users? Wouldn’t actual social - in the literal meaning of the word - media mean that you share cool shit with maybe 3-10 of your closest friends who you actually see and hang out with, who are local to you? If you have an online game community, maybe you should meet once a year for IRL beer to tap phones? Perhaps we don’t live in a global village after all, perhaps we are are dumb tribal monkeys with super computers in our pockets?
The problem I see with not using a phone number as I described, is that you'd be connecting to any old social profile - could be Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
None of those are inherently personal, it'd open up Friendster to be not materially different to any other social network as those networks don't have the concept of a personal connection - they are just generic connections (some are personal, many/most are not).
Cool to see someone did
Those who are in domain name business knows that because it affects the value of every expired/operational domain.
If you can resurrect Old Spice, why not try it elsewhere?
If so this is a meta-or-dead social network.
Making it federated etc. would make me trust it more.
What is the benefit of that perspective? It's just social media. If it goes away tomorrow, no real loss. Use it accordingly.
I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.
Again, there's no alternative that meets your original criteria let alone your additional ones.
If say, Valve started a social network I would consider using it because they've had decades to screw up Steam and they haven't. It is a bit outside their wheelhouse though.
This random guy though?
The idea that anyone would sell any project for 1bn is kinda nonsense, if a project looks worth buying for 1bn to someone, it may look to be worth keeping to the people who made it or are in control of it.
There are a lot of projects I would sell for $1m, but it is little enough that I would carefully consider for anything I've invested serious time into
though id have the utmost respect for someone who could hold onto the possibility to threaten the facebook/instagram/snapchat moat, realistically i don't think anyone in here could stick to the ideals so strongly.
it's not even a valuable thought exercise. if this thing were to gain any traction at all it's assuredly gonna get acquired. you gotta be tech-buddha to resist that.
The domain would dominate sign-up flows.
… 11 years going for me. Good on you. I don’t have any other social media accounts. I’ll do my best to join up on this one. Wholesome.
I understand the sentiment - but this would make it useless for my closest friends - we live in different cities and countries now - and it would take years to fill in the social graph. We would all have to travel and meet everyone else.
I suppose this is alleviated by the talk to a friend of a friend feature - but does sound like it partially excludes friends with limited mobility.
And yes, also one more excuse to visit faraway friends.
Somewhat anonymous, short in time, one to one, with the potential to connect afterwards on outside channels. Possibly only one conversation a day allowed, and possibly only available to pre set contacts.
But the “tap phones” thing wouldn’t work for me.
Most of my friends and family live halfway around the world from me. I visit the states every couple years, and make a point of seeing them when I can, but the reality is I live here and they live there (a dozen different theres in half a dozen countries)
Those are the people I want an app like this to keep up with. But they’re the people your app won’t even let me add as friends.
Ofc it's probably for the better if it's to have a chance to spread at least a little.
That's not me, and hasn't been for probably 20 years.
But it's a neat idea regardless.
And then it gets stolen and has a trip around the world, meeting new people.
Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.
Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).
Love the app, I’ve already had some photos shared with me!
Facebook launched in 2004. They always had ads.
Each user gives itself some field of interest, maybe its makeup, maybe its molecular biology, maybe it's something else. Then the system finds similar people with same interests. There are no subreddits with abusive moderators, no rigid containers. Just that you get content you are interested in based on genuine people. Then you can like talk to them about these things or see them posting about the stuff
and you get separate feeds for each kind of stuff,probably ai categorization
Build the platform, then find out how to make money on it later.
"in todays fast paced business environment.."
the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.
makes things like https://beej.us/guide/ an absolute treasure
Ask HN: How to make Friendster great? (98 points, 11 months ago, 141 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44053119
Make the social network private, end to end encrypted, not harvested by your servers
In this case the domain Friendster.com was bought, and a trademark was conceded (a new different trademark), I don't know precisely the implications of the trademark though, I think it's a different trademark and you still cannot imply that you are a continuation of the previous trademark holder, it's just that you are given monopoly over that word as a trademark.
Now, is that different than buying "Friendster"? A really interesting legal question, I think it is, and I think it has relevant implications, I don't think you can for example restore the website as it was and pretend a continuation as you would if you bought the company.
Honestly if the prior Friendster company itself was bought - including all the assets, codebase and historical documents (no user details) that would've been such an incredibly interesting read.
Buying the domain and getting the trademark is still cool, just not as cool.
I think that it will probably be fine if they compete in the same space of a social network, doesn't look like someone is going to go after them, the company that would have a claim against them is defunct, so even if they have a legal argument, who would raise the case? If the owners do so under their personal name it's even a weaker argument.
So in practice, in this case, subjectively I believe that it's effectively very similar as buying the company.
Friendster was not the first social network.
sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).
Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)
https://spacehey.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25245740
I run an iOS-only app that Serves a small, specific demographic (and is free. It does not generate any revenue). It’s been shipping for a bit over two years, and has just over 1,000 users. I seriously doubt it will ever get more than a couple of thousand (a rounding error, for most folks around here). I did test it with 12,000 users, so it should handle the anticipated load.
I am writing the 2.0 version, now. I think I’ll add the “tap to connect” feature, and probably QR codes, as well.
These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.
Plus it's not exposed to the public.
So just wanted to say I am rooting for you and I may be able to provide some acutely specific but embarrassing input(s) about how a Friendster 2 can happen, based on my Friendster 0 experience (it is definitely not about breaking up in high school where deleting profiles sends the news rippling to the whole universe) (it may involve learning that Indonesian black hats were scary and many and also how the social graph was uncached and always computed server side per profile visit). Now that you own the "Friendster" trademark, I hereby greenlight your soci-emdash-ability to manipulatively hint at the "possibility" of restoring profiles via the Friendster archive project, but keep it as a possibility until you big enough the patent trolls be phone tapping (this is really weird)
Hard pass from me dawg. If you don't know the business model now, folks like me are tired of trusting their data to randos on the internet without a plan for sustainability. Guaranteed to end up being just another data farm.
Neat you got the domain tho.
CTRL-F "android" "linux" "git" 0 results
sigh
PLEASE if you are developing only for the Mac ecosystem, you should be required to put (Mac only) in your title so the rest of us don't completely WASTE our time.
> a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online
my skin crawled. I live a fulfilling, creative life. I'm married, have kids, the whole nine yards. My best friendships are with people I know almost entirely online, or haven't physically seen in years because we live on different continents.
I have little interest in most of the people I see regularly, because we're friends only because our kids are in the same classes.
> If Friendster helps even a few people find that kind of connection, it will have been worth it.
Did you tap phones for OkCupid? The type of network you are building does not work that way -- you will not build the same types of connections in-person as you can online. I hope it goes well, but it's not the same type of thing.
Good luck to the app, but I'll never use this.
The overwhelming majority of people I know with whom I want to have long digital conversations with are also a minimum of 500 kilometers away from me.
>My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it.
But OkCupid didn't require people to tap their phones together in order to be able to chat in the app.
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
This person has built something using the domain. They are not squatting it.
hugely value-added activity, and a well-earned increment.
A lot of the value of these domains stems from the popularity of sites they may have been attached to in the past, or search terms that relate to them.
So these people are literally making money off of the back of others’ work whilst providing no benefit themselves, probably not that much even to their advertisers.
Such squatting sites are, at best, an annoyance to web users as well.
I don't think that old business names should be "retired" and forever banned from use. After a certain amount of time the name should be free for someone to use again, and 10 years of non-use seems reasonable to me. The main concern with reuse is confusing consumers into thinking they are dealing with the old friendster, but I think consumers are savvy enough to realize that an old trademark rising from the dead often has nothing to do with the original, regardless of whether the current trademark holders purchased rights from the original, or claimed abandoned ones, as in this case.
His other business dealings aside, I don't have a problem with how he obtained/revived the friendster domain and trademark.
Lets look at Friendster from a less foggier lense, its an attempt in the right direction. Use it or don't use it.
So the spirit of ICANN's philosophy around this is clear: we don't want people buying domains with the intent of withholding them and later profiting by selling them to trademark holders. I would argue that preemptively buying domains with the speculation that people will eventually want them and pay for them is basically a violation against the spirit of their policy, you're just operating in bad faith preemptively against any possible future owner rather than a current specific one.
Disputes around this are notoriously unsuccessful. I say all this context to get to the point that I think the current system would work fine if there were policies that included this style of preemptive squatting, and more of an ability to successfully dispute bad faith actors. Including by looking at: how many other domains does this person own and not meaningfully use, how much is the site a legitimate use versus asking ChatGPT to write 50 articles, and whether the effort or investment put into the site is proportional to a ballpark of the value of a domain name. With exceptions, perhaps, for situations like domains that are also your name.
I'm even fine with the idea that domains go to the highest bidder on fixed terms, like 5-10 years. Or that it will at least require good-faith evaluation after a fixed term. But it's a problem when that money goes to squatters instead of towards something useful, like funding infrastructure. Maybe we can have a non-profit version of Cloudflare.
* lots of jurisdictions have occupancy taxes on vacant real estate
* taxation rules differ depending on the source of income, ex: employment vs. investment
* going concerns are legally treated different than inactive entities
* qualitative usage can define treatment
* lots of internet-focused legislation provides for challenging "what" is being served
You would think this is all in Google's best interest, as the SEO of these low-value domains is a major threat when LLMs are very effective in displacing google searches.
Maybe I glossed over something
While I personally wouldn't go as far as "Society profits immensely from their contribution", these types business people do serve an important function in the economy.
Much like traditional middle-men sellers, commodity speculators, insurance providers, and the like, domain name re-sellers take on the risk that no one else are willing to bear at some particular time (that the domain they're "squatting" could be worth nothing in X years). If and when the domains they're "squatting" later on become more valuable, either through their own direct efforts, or by re-selling them to other parties that can make better use of them, then the profits they make from such transactions are justified for the aforementioned risks they bore.
If they didn't do any of this that combination of letters doesn't disappear, it just goes back to being available from the primary registrars.
The squatters are just vacuuming up some of the profit off people that would/could use that combination of letters to actually provide a service.
I don't view middle man parasitic behavior as valuable, and see no market value performed here other than extraction.
Seeing middlemen businesses as "parasitic behavior" is a common misunderstanding of their role in the economy. They make possible commercial transactions between initial producers and ultimate end-consumers, where and/or when such transactions could never have taken place affordably without their presence.
Useful middlemen do serve a role and add value. A parasitic middleman just extracts value without adding any value anything in return.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
an article that spends most of its time talking about the sunshine and roses of purchasing domains from a domain squatter, even if you are a domain squatter, is an article about domain squatting.
There is nothing inherently wrong with domain squatting. Lol. Blame the system, not the people operating within it.
That's...a good deal? Assuming even 50% margins, that's a solid yield.
Doesn’t that make it fine? If I trade three acorns for a crayon drawing of a squirrel, that’s a nothing burger. If I bought those three acorns for a million dollars, then someone might have a legitimate gripe with my choices.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Promoting auto-censure is also falling in ideological sermons, so this is going nowhere consistent. Only in illusion can one think to stand on apolitical and ideological-less point of view.
There is a rating system, and it’s fine some posts goes down to oblivion if it doesn’t fit the majority mindset of voting users.
It’s true what’s this person is doing on charitable/benevolent work is unknown, and the post anticipated this scenario and did express appreciation if that was the case.
Plus, calling for a step back to think about one own actions on their own terms, that’s not what we could categorize a harsh condemnation.
Favoring closed information bubbles, void of any critical thought is doing no one a favor.
For me the special sauce that's been taken away from SM is just seeing my friends stuff, I want to see your dog with out it having to be a 2min video with onscreen graphics, SEO keyword optimisation in the post title and brand tags. Show me your fluffy dog updates, just dont force me to ask you about it first.