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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

> but I really believe that the next "big social thing" will be a start-up that will somehow make it easy to approach people you don't know and spark up a conversation.

Absolutely. This is a particularly acute pain point for us nerds, but it afflicts just about everyone to some extent. Our social circles are unfortunately limited in a way that technology could certainly address.

I envision a service that would include everything from dating to finding Dungeons & Dragons groups to just finding people to chat with who are currently nearby and share an interest. Google Glass would make this kind of thing even more interesting.

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>> a start-up that will somehow make it easy to approach people you don't know and spark up a conversation

This technology exists and it's called approaching people you don't know and sparking up a conversation.

Social skills need to be developed just like nun-chuck skills and computer hacking skills.

Thank you.

Also, these skills are probably best developed without the cyborg-camera sitting on your face.

I developed that skill. Took a few months. Would hang out at my local coffee shop and strike up conversation with random people. You know what I found out? Most people are seriously boring. I would not recommend this option for the GP's use case. Sure you could find your next D&D group that way. But you'd be far better served searching Yahoo! groups. (Do they even have those anymore? Been so long since I played.) If you're looking for random connections, sure, by all means, talk to random people. Anything else, you may want to find something a little more targeted.

Yeah, I think the average person underestimates how broadly humanity's interests range, and so vastly overestimates the chance that a random stranger will have something in common with him. When you're used to making friends through the organizations you're part of - school, work, clubs, activities - you get a biased sample because you have the organization in common. Try online dating or chatting up random strangers and you'll quickly find that most people are pretty different in their hobbies & interests.

This exists already, but you have to do some work to find it. LiveJournal used to be particularly good at making friends with random strangers; I'm still in touch with some that I made a decade ago in the Harry Potter fandom, even though I've never met them in person. Also, all the niche forums on the Internet - whether your interest is Game of Thrones, Starcraft, startups, JQuery, Apple products, Linux, gymnastics, food, Harry Potter, Star Trek, or NaNoWriMo, there are communities out there for you. You just have to do some Googling and link-following to find them.

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