Making “social” social again: Announcing Mozi | Hacker News Reader

Making “social” social again: Announcing Mozi

ev.medium.com

"The primary value proposition of Mozi (today) is simple: It lets you know when you’re going to be in the same place (city or event) as someone you know."

This is fairly shortsighted. How many people actually travel from city to city. I bet the vast majority of people have a 3km bubble around their house and work and that's as far as they travel 90% of the time. Additionally, it tracks when you are going to an event. At that point, you are already out of the house around other people.

I like the idea of an app that is "private. Non-performative. No public profiles. No public status competitions. No follower counts. No strangers." but I think it doesn't need to hinge on always going out and traveling. It should simply prompt you to check in with friends (not in the mental health status way) but simply "Hey, you haven't chatted with Sarah recently, say Hi" or "Steve's birthday is coming up, wish him a Happy Birthday". Simply just connecting with friends will perhaps result in "IRL" connections, but basing the whole app on connecting after those plans are made seems a bit "cart before the horse".

Makes me think back to Foursquare - it didn't tell anyone anything in advance but it did tell you who else was at your exact location.

Depending on your permissions and if you would let it know about Facebook events, calendar events, etc. then you might get notifications or see when someone is going to be going to the same restaurant, etc. I think events is the key, while you're focused a bit on city. They do specify event so that's something, perhaps.

It really made me think of Dopplr, which was one of the delighful and beautiful Web 2 apps that never quite broke out.

The thing that feels different between now and Web 2 is that the Internet is so much bigger. So you can build an app that has a niche and it can still be pretty big. I was on the early beta for this app and it's great, especially if networking and travel are a big part of your life. I honestly have no idea if it even needs to be bigger than that although I know it can be.

Dopplr is the first thing I thought of too.

And Foursquare was great.

But they shot themselves in the foot by trying to become Yelp and moving Foursquare into “Swarm”.

Their problem was they couldn’t come up with a monetization strategy that was working and at the same time Yelp was raking in the valuations.

To me, this looks like a fantastic idea, and something that could be really useful in a niche, but I think it's going to fly over the head of a lot of folk because it's fairly obviously targeted at highly mobile, maybe HNWI's who do a lot of travel - it's not going to be useful for "most" people.

Similar vibes to lawmakers that have public hearings with airline execs and talk about air travel issues as if it's an issue American voters frequently think about.

Most Americans travel 0-2 times per year. About half don't fly at all.

It's also like the news always summarizing the stock market even though ~40% of Americans hold no stock at all, even indirectly through mutual funds or retirement accounts[1].

1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

Eh, the news dealing with issues that affect 60% of people seems pretty reasonable to me?

I also don't really think it's particularly helpful to categorise people in this way - if we were talking about an immutable characteristic, like if the news spent half of the time talking about the struggles of being 7ft tall even though basically no-one is 7ft tall, that would be a bit odd.

But buying shares is a generally available thing.

16% of six-figure earners is the really shocking part here. They make 100k and don’t have a 401k or IRA? What?! How?!

I could see blue collar workers making up that segment, especially if they are self-employed.

A young plumber or electrician who doesn't know the value of compounding interest.

All taxpayers are exposed to the stock market via taxpayer funded defined benefit pension plans and retiree healthcare plans. Stock market goes down, taxes go up (and/or quantity/quality of government services goes down).

Of course, that can happen anyway due to a relatively rapid decrease in the purchasing power of the currency.

There are social networks for farmers to find love, why not some socials for the 1%-ers?

In the live-aboard sailboat cruising niche we have Sea People https://seapeopleapp.com which has a similar basic value prop but many features specifically for that lifestyle.

This kind of reminds me of the original version of the app called Color, where you'd see social posts organized by geo coordinates. Imagine being in a coffee shop and seeing a feed of every post and photo posted from within the coffee shop. The benefit being you could make friends in your area.

Does anyone else remember this app? It came out around the same era as Path.

Thank you! Yes, I remember.

I just googled Path because I thought that was the one. But it was indeed Color I was thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs

I recall they (claimed they) had some crazy tech that used the microphone to detect if you were in the same room as other users.

Color was right up there with Juicero in terms of go-nowhere startups. IIRC they paid the better part of 1 million for the color.com domain name[1].

[1] Ah, it was a mere $350,000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs#Launch

This makes me feel a lot better about my $300 .ai domain purchase for a side project I immediately shelved, but I suppose it's the same impulse just with deeper pockets.

Isn't this bumble's bff mode?

With a LOT less users.

yeah, wow, blast from the past. I was thinking of Path while reading this also. These kind of small-scope social app attempts.

Must have been from a more innocent time.. It sounds super cool until you think about the privacy nightmare it could be? I'm thinking about how people managed to triangulate users locations from grindr, or the cesspit of bullying that YikYak was.

Friggin foursquare! We'd voluntarily tell the world exactly where we were at any given time (and where we weren't - at our homes).

But but but!

I was Mayor of my favourite coffee shop!

MAYOR!

(I must go and add that to my LinkedIn profile...)

I remember the handwritten note taped to the door of Color's office in Palo Alto, across the street from the hamburger joint. It had something to do with the founder's principles or something.

At that point I realized it wasn't a serious company.

The last time I walked by the building it was "The Institute for the Future."

This reads like a Vonnegut story

Reminds me of a social network called Dopplr, which existed briefly almost 20 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr

Yes! Just commented saying that too. I loved Dopplr andn I loved that era of Web 2.0 apps.

I wish you the best with your social app, but I'd like to offer a cautionary tail.

Barq, a furry fandom-focused app, has some of the same features. It's primarily for local meetups or seeing when your friends are in town for a convention. Unfortunately, Barq's location data has been used to dox and harass people before (even though they implemented a system that returned "fuzzy" GPS results).

If the primary value of the app is "know when person A is at location X", think through all of the ways this information could be used to hurt people. Even contrived and silly ways. And then try to safeguard it as much as possible.

I recently shared a blog post about how BlueSky could implement "limited audiences" without changing their current infrastructure. (Spoiler: It involves state-of-the-art cryptography.) It may be worth reading.

https://soatok.blog/2024/11/29/imagining-private-airspaces-f...

>For example, I just got back from Miami. Before going, I put my plan (just the city and what days) into Mozi. This information was shared just with my contacts (minus any I wouldn’t want it to be). So, even before going, I was able to see both the people I know who live there and other friends who were visiting at the same time, so we could meet up and make plans.

>Mozi also helps you decide where to go. “Events” on Mozi (currently a beta feature) lets you see who you know may be going—or considering going—to a conference or event before you go. (If you happen to be going to SXSW, join the Mozi event. I’ll be there too.)

Seems like more of a "networking" app as opposed to friends as it mentioned ...

Still, I don't dislike the general idea.

> Still, I don't dislike the general idea.

An app that tracks your location (and future location), founded by a venture capitalist?

I'll pass thanks.

(I'd be interested to see it there is a way to build this in an e2e privacy-preserving way, perhaps built on tech used in Signal and the fediverse, where only you and your contacts ever see unencrypted data about your location and events?)

I'm more interested in the idea.

Despite the likelihood of this being not all that privacy friendly, I'm just considering the concept for now.

Huh. At the risk of being crude, this is already a feature of queer hookup apps, including recording your plans and seeing who else in your network will be attending an event or visiting your area.

It's pretty much the same problem set, I think? You have a relatively small social circle (as a percentage of the whole population) and your plans probably won't appeal to those outside of that group.

Queers always lead the way, without queers bluesky never would have taken off

he doesn't discuss financials, but that's my first and only question: how is this gonna be funded if it takes off?

Exactly my question too. It seems a little disingenuous not to talk about it. Is it going to try to sell me travel and accom? Venues to meet up with people?

I have no interest unless I see a sustainable, unshitified business model.

The founder is also behind medium.com, if that sheds any light on the risk of enshittification.

I can see several ways.

for example peer-pressure recommendations.

Look, you and Jacky are in town, both of you are close to Margo's Restaurant, you should meet up there. Here is a 5% discount.

Both Jacky and Margo are going on this weekend to Ulaanbaatar for a fancy snack, flying Fred Flintstone airlines. They have great rates this weekend and you are just sitting on your couch watching reruns. Why not get a flight on Fred Flintstone airlines (here is the link), you might even sit next to one of them!

the monetization hopes are mentioned in the FAQ on the website: https://www.mozi.app/faqs (tldr: freemium)

ev also does mention in the NYTimes article, for those that have NYT subs

"They shared stories about reconnecting with old friends via the app — moments that seemed valuable enough that customers might pay for it, he said. Mozi is free, but plans to charge for premium features it develops."

(disclosure: i work on the mozi app)

By selling the data.

Unless they engineer it so they do not have any data to sell, sooner or later someone's gonna sell that data.

They've weasel-worded their privacy policy to allow this, the buyer of the data just needs to pretend to be a potential investor or buyer:

"We may disclose personal information in the context of actual or prospective business transactions (e.g., investments in Mozi, financing of Mozi, public stock offerings, or the sale, transfer or merger of all or part of our business, assets or shares), for example, we may need to share certain personal information with prospective counterparties and their advisers."

There are so many challenges with building a social app, especially around contacts... I'm not sure how they'll mitigate all this stuff, but fun to think about it and hope they do succeed in doing so anyway.

A few considerations off the top of my head:

- relationships are extremely fragile and can exist in all sorts of awkward middle states, outside of just "friend enough to notify when I'm in town" vs not. the risk of creating awkward meatspace side effects is extremely high with this kind of thing, with very large downside risk that human beings are very attuned to. for example: exes, former bosses or colleagues gone sideways, people you said something weird to once at a party, stalkers, etc. are all people you might have in your contacts

- relatedly, contacts growing out of sync organically over time is actually a feature, not a bug. it's easy to let contacts die when they die by themselves without having to prune them -- and nobody's delicate feelings get hurt by letting this happen

- existing on a mobile phone while not being an attention-sucking nightmare cesspool -- while also not /creating/ another attention-sucking cesspool, despite having all the social data necessary to do so -- seems like an impossible challenge. how do you get people to remember your little app in a sea of Trending Flamebait notifications? (others have noted this related to funding model, but that part feels surmountable, especially as a passion project from a billionaire)

I would love for this to be a thing, but it’s always going to be super niche. There have been other similar tools, with limited success: Nomad List, Doppler, TripIt’s now-gone social features, Apple’s Find My. So far, the best way has just been to share travel plans in friend chat groups.

I just connected Mozi to my nearly 1000 contacts and it found zero matches, meaning I’m the first one in my network to use it. I suspect to be solo for a very long time.

Sending Christmas cards is old-fashioned, but it’s a pretty good indicator of who you actually know well enough to have their mailing address. (Or well enough to ask for it without it being weird.)

No special app needed, since it can be done with a spreadsheet.

And you include everywhere you're going to be next year in your Christmas card?

Weirdly, AIM was a great social media application. Anyone on AIM was on because they wanted to talk. I actually miss AIM a good amount, now you can reach anyone but you're always interrupting their life.

I have thought about this problem a lot in the past and I feel the older you get the harder it becomes to make new friends. If you have moved to a new place then you loose all those connections slowly and it's a challenge to make new friends. At least that's what happened to me. And on top of that your financial status that defines who accepts you as a friend. Also how much you can afford and are willing to invest to make and keep a friend. Something more than can fit in an app and a problem that a business can solve for you. But I am glad someone is trying to do something about it.

> I feel the older you get the harder it becomes to make new friends.

While that's true, at least for me you also end up with some deep deep friendships that easily survive years or even decades apart, which are closer and more meaningful than most of the friendships with people you see daily/weekly.

Not bad, but, please, don't display kids DOBs - just the age. Also, marriage should have an anniversary date to be social per the bold claim. Parents and other relatives should also be added, and each related person should have an invite link that links their name to the future profile. No usernames? That's refreshing, but I really hate when companies at usernames late and I can't grab my usual one on time, because I missed their emails, etc.

Pretty interesting idea - we really need more ways to nudge us to connect in real life. I actually created a fun little platform for people to try niche social networks together in a 30-day "cohort" and this seems like a great example of a social network that would be fun to discuss! Anyone can join at https://soshials.com/platforms/mozi

Name has no connection to the important Chinese philosopher Mozi[1] which was my first association. As for the value proposition of the app I personally don't see it. If I want to speak or catch up with friends - I message them and/or call them. I don't see how yet another app makes this easier.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi

This seems to target people who are both highly mobile and have broad networks of mobile contacts.

Is this good? I can't tell.

It feels like the last social dating taboo is open time bidding. something like: "here's my instagram. I've got an extra seat at performance X, a reservation at restaurant Y, or lift tickets for resort Z. intro yourself if you want to be my guest, or bid cash for dutch"

it's like everyone's dancing around that as if they're above it somehow.

Definitely thought of that kind of thing. There are about 20 restaurants in Collegetown, it would be fun to try them all, even more fun if I could share the experience with other people who feel the same.

This is very similar to Dopplr.com - started in 2007ish and had a bunch of hype but not many people formed a habit of using it. It was acquihired by Nokia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr

I’ve heard from some recent YC videos that people have been making these friend finder apps for something like 20 years. Is this true? And if it is, what are some previous apps that are similar to this one?

Foursquare

It’s a nice idea. I know someone who released something super similar called TreeTop. There’s also something I’ve been getting ads for called NomadTable. There’s an urge for connection out there.

Are you only allowed to have friends if you use iOS (and they all do)?

There's no Android app (yet) and no website - effectively making this an iOS only social network.

I'll pass, thanks

https://archive.ph/lR1lI

So it's a social network for digital nomads? I was thinking of making an app like that.

I love this idea, but wonder if it's really more of a missing feature of WhatsApp.

“I realized I had spent too much time on startups and not enough on building relationships. So I decided the only way to fix it was another start up.”

Huh?

This is a very well done launch. We ought to be taking notes.

As for the app itself, it looks more like something niche Ev made in an attempt to enrich his own life than a business poised for growth. There is a place for that. I hope, anyway.

Lmao, this is exclusively for the wealthy jetset. Give me a break

Most people have a few friends and they’re in the same place. “My people” are in the same place today that they were in yesterday and will be again tomorrow. Most people prefer the inefficient and imperfect group chat because it’s personal. Most people can’t imagine anything worse than bringing more technology into their personal relationships. I’m sure this app is great for the small number of us that are fortunate enough to live like ev, without a care in the world, vibing our way around the world… partying with tenacious founders hungry for an exited-founder’s co-sign, but that’s, what, a few thousand people? That’s not social, it’s niche.

>Most people prefer the inefficient and imperfect group chat because it’s personal.

It's small-scale, has high barriers to entry, and entirely user-directed. In other words, the exact opposite of what makes money in profit-driven social networking. And that's exactly why group chats are so great.

> Most people prefer the inefficient and imperfect group chat because it’s personal. Most people can’t imagine anything worse than bringing more technology into their personal relationships.

Group chat has been a thing since the late 90s and remains superior in my mind as well. It often seems like the real problem some of these apps are trying to solve is that there's no good way to monetize group chat.

> “My people” are in the same place today that they were in yesterday and will be again tomorrow.

"My people" are people who once were in that sort of temporal and geographic bubble, but are not necessarily local top me any more.

Some of the most important people in my life are spread around the globe, and we only get together in person once a year or maybe even once a decade (more of those lately, given global health stuff in the last half decade).

I bet almost everybody who's ever been to Burningman more than two or three times has the same sort of geographically distributed friend circles. Same as anybody who regularly goes to a specific conference (I have friends I originally met when I was going to The Perl Conference in the late 90's), or festival (I have a close cicrle of friend who mostly live 1000km away that I met/meet every year at a music festival).

Someone wants to pull Zuckerberg's trick again.

nope!!

this thing like medium, will become enshittified quickly.

Sounds like a problem for the jetsetter crowd. Good for them! I have much more mundane social network needs.

> (BTW, we are fully staffed right now but will be slowly adding to the team this year. If interested, please reach out.)

Isn't it interesting how the vibes for hiring changed? Before, every founder would write something like "we are hiring!". Now it is: send us your curriculum, but we won't reply.

BTW I just tried it and what a terrible app. Feels like a ghost town.

Cool! He re-invented couchsurfing (yes, it is a social network besides the couch, people just hangout in the towns they travel to)

Mozi is the private social network that helps you build real-word relationships.

Isn't that Whatsapp or Signal is?

I also have come to realize that most repeat founders who are in the same space usually do not make great founders. They almost always make the same mistakes.

I would not fund this company.

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