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Comment by revorad | Hacker News Reader

Could someone please explain what messageparty exactly does and how it works? (I don't have an iPhone.)

It's an iPhone app for location-based chat. You open up MessageParty and it shows you a list of geographically defined "rooms" (e.g., "Mountain View, CA" or "Startup School"). This means you can chat with other people in the same town or at the same concert or conference, for example.

MessageParty is location-based chat. You open the app and it gives you a list of nearby parties that have been created by others. It's useful for concerts, events, conferences, etc.

Well, it's useful if people use it. You have the dating site problem. You want tons of people not connected to each other using a single service.

Perfect ground for a Web 1.0 multi-million dollar marketing barrage, but kinda difficult otherwise.

It's even got a harder battle ahead of it than a dating site does. With Message Party, there's gotta people a ton of people using the site at that moment.

So who can create a party?

Presumably, you restrict people from joining a party based on their location. But I imagine there are a few edge cases. For example, if I'm on my way to a concert but want to know something about a tent beforehand, can I do it?

Nothing better than being at a concert, and some idiot chatting on his smartphone with strangers about how great the concert is.

Why don't people just turn off their phones and enjoy the concert/event/whatever?

Meh what is society coming to!

If this app does indeed take off it will be an interesting statement about modern society. Perhaps it means we have become antisocial, or perhaps it simply means we've found a better ice breaker. I'll hope for the latter ;)

I think their vision goes beyond parties/concerts/events. It's like a mobile Q&A for a specific area. What if you were at a brick and mortar store such as Bestbuy and had a question of opinion that both the other customers there and employees can answer? Or at a restaurant and wanted to quickly know what were the best dishes people are enjoying at that moment and at that specific restaurant? Many different business applications.

I feel like this would be better if it were more like Bump. Basically everyone in a specific range could post to other people's devices. Support for iPhone only is lame too.

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