Show HN: swytch.net - my attempt at a social network | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: swytch.net - my attempt at a social network

7 pointsswytch7 comments

I've just launched swytch.net, a little social network I've been working on for a month or so. It's nowhere near ready for public consumption but the core ideas are there and I'd be interested to hear what others think. Here are some of the things that I think differentiate it from facebook and co:

1) multiple profiles: having one set of "friends" from all your different social circles limits you to sharing only what you're willing to share with the entire group. On swytch, a user can have a separate, distinct profile for each social circle.

2) robust privacy: each profile is either public or private. Content is either open to anyone or restricted to your followers. There is no third tier - you don't have to worry about friends of friends accessing your data. Social networks need stronger, simpler privacy - not more privacy controls.

3) private by default. I think the perception that users don't care about privacy is way off the mark. Users don't always know about privacy settings and their implications but that's not the same as not caring. On swytch, everything is private by default. On private profiles, nothing but the username is revealed to non-followers.

4) location: sites like foursquare and gowalla offer this but they're too gimmicky. I think they have to be because their entire service is based around location, they have little else to offer. However, location data combined with updates, photos events etc is very useful.

Please kick the tyres and tell me what you think. There is no landing page yet but you can sign up here (only a un & pw are required):

http://www.swytch.net/sign_up

I like a lot of this. The simplicity, multiple profiles etc. I'd switch from Facebook if everyone else I knew would too. I think you need some kind of Facebook interaction built in to get it going quickly. Facebook has so many users that first adopters are giving up a lot to move.

Edit: Signup was easy, the username admin was available. Sweet.

thanks for the feedback, very useful. Integration with other services is on the todo list but for the time being I want to focus on the core features and user experience.

I think it can be useful without a large existing social graph. For example, I went to a local tech meetup last month and met some interesting people. I wouldn't necessarily add them as facebook friends but I am following them on twitter. The downside is I now get updates on anything they post when I only really want updates on the things they're working on.

As I said in a previous comment I think social network is the wrong label for this product. It's more of a group communication tool. The broadcast/follow model is a very efficient and useful way for groups to communicate and that's the core of of swytch.net - it's group communication with less noise and more signal. Because it's not trying to be the 'one true network' it doesn't need a huge social graph. Just the people that you want to communicate with in a specific context need to be on it.

> Signup was easy, the username admin was available. Sweet.

:)

maybe you can center on temporary social networks, a kind of throw-away account system for social networking when you need it...

Like, I meet some people somewhere and we want to engage more, so someone creates an identity just for that and mails friends to do the same and link.

Personally, I think that grey is a bad color: too dreary and dull. Also, tell people how they can use your social network in a way that Facebook cannot do, i.e. provide use cases and have strong calls-to-action to try those features out. I would focus a lot on the multiple profiles feature.

Its missing the social aspect right now - I can't find anyone (much less my friends).

good effort, but ui could be better.

going to swytch.net[http://swytch.net] leads to no heroku app found

don't see much value in a social network where everything is private.. is it still social ?

gowalla does step 4 + a lot of other cool things.

again good effort, and keep it up, maybe eventually you will find that feature that is killer.

thanks for the feedback. I need to rethink the 'social network' moniker. It's more of a communication tool.

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