What it's like to work at Radar

It's also great to see Radar end up on Hacker News. As Melissa mentions in the intro, our privacy model means we're doing something 'different' with mobile social networking, which usually ends up getting us more mainstream writeups (WSJ and The Times recently) than exposure in the tech sphere.

I have tremendous respect for the Hacker audience, and I'd love to hear any opinions from this sector. Because of Radar's core focus on your content being exposed to the average person's ~real social network, their closer friends and family, we see a larger range of high use cases than just people with 'lifecasting' intentions. Suddenly, the post informing everyone that you're enjoying a plate of spaghetti is interesting rather than a contribution to how much 'noise' you produce, or acquaintances from across the country are keeping up with your actions visually and engaging in conversation around it rather than having short bursts of info pushed on them. It's gratifying to see the average teen or college student who can't see the utility in a lot of web 2.0 services pick up Radar and know right away how to get his friends involved with something he just pulled his camera phone out to capture.

Of course, just off the center of the bell curve (or further down the tail, depending on your thoughts) are the info-obsessed or moblogging crowd, who will find Radar in a tech blog and have the common "Why haven't I heard of it?" or "So it's a visual Twitter?" reaction when they see that their content can be made public also. There's also the guy with the 8Mpixel camera on his phone taking macro shots of blades of grass and sunsets who thinks he's seen picture sharing before. This isn't surprising to anyone here. The amount of people with camera phones across the globe is staggering, and that number is increasing exponentially. Of course, the way people utilize the service is going to change based on their needs and understanding.

Common to all groups and use cases is the ease in which a person's content becomes attentively absorbed by their networks in this model. Some look at a setup that encourages a group discussion with friends rather than a large building full of people screaming out loud and think that it's a flawed marketing model counterintuitive to the obsession with virality, but as many services fail to translate mobile social networking (and successful advertising) to the mobile space, and the mainstream continues to push back against Twitter with, "I don't get it," or "I tried it and I think it's dumb," coupled with reports on usage being lower than what's been hyped, how attractive does the notion of engaging conversation and eagerness to absorb content become to people seeking solutions to the notion of social networking fatigue (and, of course, advertisers)? In that respect, we indeed view our model as doing something 'different' here, and the growth and feedback we've received to this point are good reinforcements for our resolution.

As I alluded to, it's satisfying for me to see Radar on Hacker News, but it would also be great to hear anyone's reaction to the service. I already saw an article pop up this morning discussing our use of the .net domain name. Any other reflections?

Take a look around. If you're new, feel free to make Ray (the van mentioned in the article) your first friend on Radar, or, more obviously, get a couple people you know involved with a few of your posts. Here's Ray's info:

user name: Ray1965 invite code: Ray

Again, would love to hear anything back - good or bad, and glad to see everyone enjoyed a look at the office. Thanks, guys.

Very cool.