As an engineer I wonder if/how you would open this up to a wider audience (behind “lonely” users). Moderation is the first issue that comes to mind, but I’m guessing that’s already a concern with the current audience.
We first wanted to attack the 'hair on fire' problem as Paul Graham states it, creating solutions for people who really need this connection platform that is different from others because they would tolerate it even if our platform is sucky!
Moderation is easier on this platform I think, and so far we did not have to moderate any content. I think it is self-policing by nature because people need to speak what they want to share and also share their approximate location.
Already in listening through what is on there, a few people were clearly depressed, and lending support to those people is awesome, but also difficult to sustain (for any given individual).
And a couple of very interesting occasions were when the people who initially reported 'lonely' decided to become 'supporters' because they wanted to give back to the community for the support they got, and wanted to help others who are in need more than themselves. I found that very touching :')
In the near future, we plan to implement private messaging functions, which will be end-to-end encrypted. Upcoming feature! :)