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Comment by estebancastano | Hacker News Reader

For the past year, I've been working on the social isolation problem. Here's the idea we're currently developing. Would love to hear folks' feedback. Would you be excited about using this?

"A social app, like Tinder but for hangouts with friends.

See what your friends want to do, and swipe right to show you’re interested. You can also join hangouts in the global feed to instantly expand your social circle. Hangouts are capped at 10 people so you can actually get to know each other. Post things you want to do, like "Hike in John Muir". When 10 people swipe right, a chat opens up so you can coordinate when to meet & who is down to go."

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I've heard some variant of this idea a thousand times and it doesn't work.

Also, slightly ironic/depressing to react to an article about systemic loneliness in the tech age with "maybe we can make an app for that".

This is exactly the problem, that can be solved with software, we know it from the past (IRC, ICQ random chat, Livejournal).

Actually met my oldest friend on ICQ random chat. Lost touch with everyone from High School, University but still chat to him most days and visit when we're in the same country.

Maybe there is hope for it.

The answer isn't in an app. Its where you live.

You might like to read "The Anatomy of Friendship". People are basically hardwired to like people they're physically close to and come into contact with regularly, so try to tick those two boxes.

The trouble with an app like this is that if it works and people become friends they'll probably just switch to the lowest common denominator/free platform, e.g. facebook/whatsapp to coordinate, so monetisation could be tricky. I.e. if your app is 100% efficient, people may use it once then not return.

You also have the added challenge of seeding this "two-sided" marketplace (people suggesting activities and those saying they'll attend) in every locality you want to operate in, so you'll need a compelling growth strategy. It also sinks or swims on people actually turn up for events.

Good luck - I do think Meetup sucks and could be far better, but I think you'd need a lucky break/very interesting twist to really gain traction.

One way to way too seed activities would be to let professional organizers advertise on the platform (also solves monetization). E.g. a local sports club could offer a trial training session for small groups through the platform.

Trying something new is usually slightly uncomfortable when you're the only newbie (and everyone else has to accommodate you); and in the clubs I've been a member of, those who stuck around for longer were almost always already friends with another member.

Having whole groups sign up at once gives the club a better chance at retaining them and should also provide a fun experience for everyone even if they don't decide to stay.

Then you've just got Meetup again though, where you get a different group of people going each week (that's my experience anyway)

I have been thinking about this a lot too. My solution is more low tech.Humans are designed to live in communities but modern communities are very isolating. My indian friends in America live in a close knit indian community and live next to each other. I've noticed that they don't suffer from same social isolation as other americans do.

My solution is to scale this to everyone, A housing colony with community kitchen and hangout areas. More like a less intense urban co-op. This is probably also a solution to healtcare crisis in america, healthy food + social belonging == well being.

This is accurate. I lived in a coop and it was very communal and not isolating at all. One critical thing is communal dining... this forces people to interact and connect.

There are already apps like Meetup which help people 'meet up' with others, make new friends etc, but their purpose is not explicitly about making friends.

Ultimately, though, getting yourself to an event with other people is only part of the problem, you still need to be able to connect with the people you meet, introduce yourself, have a conversation, bond.

If you really want to create an app to tackle social isolation, maybe you could look at something that helps people improve their social skills instead, a sort of online tutor. There are definitely a lot of tricks to be learned to thrive in social situations, and while some people seem innately more equipped, I believe almost everyone can learn them to some degree.

These ideas always ended up becoming dating apps in the past so the idea to restrict it to your existing social circle is a smart one. I would consider using it if it was well executed.

Thanks Rory - very helpful!

But what if I want to build one up? I think something like a dating app (but not for dating) could work. You'd just have to do some a policing to avoid the trend towards people trying to find love, since both apparently don't work together.

Instead of an app I think we need to rethink our living arrangements.

Where I live (Japan) living alone is the new norm. After I moved out of university dorms I've lived in little shoebox apartments with my own little kitchen, my own little bathroom and no need to cross paths with any of the other 100 people in my building at all. I see that a lot of the new apartment blocks around my city are full of small, single-occupancy apartments too.

There are no communal spaces. There are no chance encounters. People seem to feel like there is too much risk in meeting new people, let alone dining with them.

There have been some shared houses popping up here and there. But they are viewed as as exceptional and unconventional. Social interaction has become a peculiar character trait rather than a normal part of life.

Several of those already exist. Somehow, it seems intrinsically impossible to solve this problem with another app.

I have approached the problem from another angle. My hypothesis is that social groups only form through continued joint experiences. The easiest way is to achieve this is go to regularly go to free events. I have build drop!in [1] for the event discovery and message your friends informally that you will be going.

Interestingly just a couple of day I wrote about the topic of loneliness in the modern age at my medium [2]

[1] http://www.idrop.in

[2] https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/life-after-facebook-is-re...

I actually tried to solve this problem as well: https://www.upfor.co/

I'm not sure if it has any value, but it was an attempt to lower the barrier of entry to hanging out with people, and at least it's a fun challenge to work on!

Would you say this is a more low entry barrier meetup.com? I think its hard for women to join these kinds of things due to high prevalence of "creepers". Once its mostly men, the platform is dead.

Great idea, I'd do it somewhat like this if i had a large enough team:

features needed to be successful: --STack overflow/HN/Reddit style Rep or magical internet points: These things are important, look how compelling they are for people to go out of their way to do things.... If you can tap into this so people go out of their way... to leave their house and socialize. even if its superficial for internet points, its helping adn putting them in the right direction.

--badges, via Audible App/Duolingo App, and other big sites that have probably spent big $$$$ coming to the conclusion that these things increase engagement. Have badges for 'hung out with same person in same meetup event 6 times in a row...(having social interactions with the same people over and over again builds better connections.) also: hung out with a newb (low reputation) and a (insert great noun here warlock/mage (gender neutral)/pilot etcc.) basically a veteran socializer in same group.(sub point... people can get different avatar badges i dunno anything to make it optionally fun/kooky not so serious, adds a great common talking point when players (social players) get together in a meetup.

--these things can also be refactored to mimic Riot games 'League of Legends' game, a free to play game, that is the #1 esports game in the world, with more viewers than NBA finals. They use 'riot points' as a way to make $ so players can customize / stylize/express uniqueness in game with skins on base models... anyways point being that there oculd be points like this which allow people to 'enhance a meetup' so anyone attending gets a bunch of rep, or gets a hat, or gets a badge etc etc... maybe it costs the person activating it 10$, but its totally worth it for them cause the nerdy players coming are psyched for the __Free__ magical internet points or magical virtual hat or whatever. Also you can tie it into businesses and volunteer organizations in your local town. Like, meetup at foodbank berlin, foodbank Newyork, southside to volunteer and get XXXX extra points, or increase your volunteer badge etc.. heck put in a talent-tree a la duolingo/diablo for volunteering advancment haha (this step would require late stage company growht with lots of emplyees / communtiy mgrs and operations to avoid corruption and loopholes in this system)

At the end of each meetup have an optional form players can fill out ascribing strange nouns or adjectives to other players (green rooted dandelion, extreme fluff shark, ported slime swamp) a la heroku/gfycat slug style. They wont ever know, the exact attributions they receive but every 6 months some strange algorithm takes the inputs and generates a strange pokemon style creature or item and gives it to them.

then fractal-idea-spiral off this and include them in meetup invites with other players who have been given randomly given similar creatures. so then the commonality in that unique meetup is the strange-ass reward they receive in this game.

also see Yelp, and how they have community events, could probably snipe some ideas from that to increase peoples local engagement in this. Or, plug into yelps api and have food based events where people meetup based on local deals restaurants are having. then have sub games inside the meetup like who can take the best photo of a drink shrine, where everyone stacks their drinks/cans of sodas in an intricate pattern, or who can make the best fries shrine or some weird art construction thing like that. they are all passed into a NN-imageclassifier you have running that tries to accurately match em to ancient temple shrines as well as pictures of fries etc...make up some function to give each picture a score. whatever the challenge is. This is crazy dumb, but thats the point its some kooky dumb thing they are doing together and its fun its social. also great press cause it will generate weird headlines.

There would be lots of features/game modes in this app, the food one above being an example. so like LeagueOfLegends, make some of them unlockable (2-5$), but have them on 'rotation' so they are always playable eventualyl throughout say, 2-3 months, also players can eventually unlock em wihtout paying, by using the points they accumulated.

Wow, you've listed three things I absolutely hate. Perhaps I'm simply not cut out for human interaction.

which of them do you hate? I think the point of the game modes would be to cater to different peoples unique approaches to life. not everyone has the same perceptions/tastes.

Fake internet points, meaningless rewards, and cosmetic bullshit.

I think gamification of socialization in general is part of the reason all social media sucks.

Reading this is like watching a robot try to mimic human interaction

well it is an app after all trying to do that haha!

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