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Comment by peterkshultz | Hacker News Reader

That the app is both geofenced and anonymous reminds me of Yik Yak, which was a huge success on my college campus before the company decided to move away from anonymity.

Did you develop this as a side project, or is this something you want to turn into a business?

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Yik Yak dropped anonymity because they had a problem with harassment on the platform. I'm not sure how Zone is going to be any different.

Interesting issue though.. that it should not become an harassment

Does it need to? Did YikYak need to? The death of anonymity was pretty much the death of YikYak.

Letting people talk, harassment and all seems to be the way to go. It's an opt in thing, so if you don't like it just uninstall or ignore a few users. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a good cesspool sometimes.

I have it on good sources that they dropped anonymity not because of harassment, but because of the history of anonymous apps fizzling out. Anonymous apps generally fail to generate sustainable, long-term growth.

It's indeed a side project that I've been working on for a while. It was mainly the development that interested me. Running/marketing a social messaging app is something others would probably enjoy more.

Currently I'm working on a different that, although also a software project, is more closely linked to applications/technologies that I love. It is this project I indeed aim to turn into a viable business.

I'm a big fan of this project. I'd love to talk if you're ever interested in making it something bigger!

As described I'm most likely not going to take this project much further on my own. I'll definitely reach out to you if I decide on growing it with a team or maybe as an open-source project.

+1 count me in as a future contributor as well

Actually, you on your campus might want to try out Jodel – it’s basically a German YikYak clone, but it still has all the anonymity in it.

It also has a channel feature that works somewhat like subreddits which spawns pretty nice little communities

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