jaybhum

Thank you for your kind words, and thank you for sharing your past experience on dating apps! It is interesting that you have used them to support people, I have never heard of anyone use it for that purpose, but that is very altruistic of you haha

In fact, we tried making real-time conversation feature in our previous mini-MVP, and the difficulty there was that 1. people were too hesitant to jump in a phone call 2. people were never online at the same time 3. conversations could not be enjoyed by other listeners in different times.

I have tried using Clubhouse for a while, and did not like the dynamics there, where you would only have a few speakers talking at the same time like MCs while the audience can only listen. I think by focusing on asynchronous voice messages, this platform can help individuals make connections with other individuals, which is not offered by any platforms out there.

I hope you continue to enjoy using it! And we would appreciate any feedback you have :)

So when user deletes the app, it sends two separate messages to AWS: one to the Cognito which stores the user ID and email, and one to the Dynamo database that has user data linked to the anonymized ID. The data are deleted independently, and upon receiving the success message from both of them, the account is fully deleted. That way, the user data in Dynamo DB does not have to know what is happening in Cognito.

This made me tear up a little bit :') Thank you for your kind words!

I think you really get the intent of our app. We think there is a big chunk of humanity missing from all the app offerings out there that unfortunately tend to amplify misinterpretation and distrust all for the sake of eyeballs on screen.

And I also agree with your sentiment that this might not take off. I think apps with sexual and stimulating aspects that give instant dopamine hit would have a better chance of going viral, to be honest. But, in the world of fast-food apps, we want to create a whole-some app that people can get spiritual nourishment from. It might take a while, but we believe it is the right and the good thing for humanity :)

Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I think it is a good idea to include helpful resources within the app so that supporters can support better and lonely people can decide the appropriate help they need depending on the severity of it.

We will refer to some mental experts for this part. Thanks again!

I resonate with your comment!

Someone has to pay for the servers and put food on the table... right? :P

I won't let profit take precedence over the mission that we started out with: to help people suffering from loneliness. It is personal to me since I have been through it, and I will keep iterating to make this platform the most useful to the people it serves.

Very well said! That has been a lot of what I heard from talking to the users on the platform. Many people struggle going to venues to meet people because of their anxiety, geographical location, disabilities, and time, to list a few.

Many people suffer in the dark. I hope Bubblic can be some sturdy straws for them to grab on to re-shore themselves.

I am not sure if going with limited messages is the right idea. I do want to make this platform available to people to form meaningful connections regardless of their wallet.

I think having voice alteration as a premium feature so that it is not abuse-able but accessible to people who are willing to pay for it for the extra layer of privacy, could be a net boon for the network. Still food for thought :)

I appreciate your thoughtful input! I agree, if we EVER make an iota of data about the users, that should be included in the terms and conditions of the app. The way we put the app out there to the users right now is with the understanding that we will not make any data, so we will uphold that.

Regarding law enforcement: I think that could be a good idea. Have the data permanently deleted after a period of time and/or ensure backups are deleted completely. Thank you for your feedback!

Thank you for your kind words :)

Yeah, many people approach loneliness with different motives, and the one we are trying to promote on this platform is genuine connection. Sure, it could develop into a friendship or a romantic relationship, but we think it should start from authenticity. Too many apps focus on superficial qualities, and the world does not need another one!

We did our job of putting this out there. We hope people from different pockets in the world who feel the same come and join us. If it does not turn out well, I think the journey was well worth it.

Thanks for the feedback.

The map feature can help bridge the gap between online connection and real-life connection, in my opinion. If you see that person you are talking to is near you and you hit it off very well, you can decide to meet in real life and form the real-life relationship, whether friendship or romantic relationship. That is the ultimate goal!

I want Bubblic to be the stepping stone for meaningful connections, a means to a real-life connection :)

I have updated the website now to include that link. Thank you.

As far as monetization goes, we plan to add premium features like stickers, and voice changers. There will be people who do not want to talk with their voice precisely for the reason you mentioned: one can consider it to be a sensitive data. Why do we want to offer voice-alteration as a paid feature? Because, if it is free for all, we fear that there will be people abusing the feature that jeopardizes the authenticity of the platform.

We do NOT plan to sell or share users' data with a third party, or use users' data to train an internal AI model because I think that fundamentally betrays the goodwill that users bring to our platform.

ah shucks.... Could you change your default browser to Chrome temporarily and try the sign up process again, while we still work on fixing this issue?

Sorry that we did not catch this earlier :(

Thank you for letting me know! We will make appropriate update to prevent that from happening, at least less often. I think it happens when the websocket fails to make connections on the first several tries, which is quite annoying...

That is an interesting point. I feel like there will be people telling me that I am exploiting people's loneliness if I ever make a penny from this. I do not plan to put the current experience behind a paywall ever. This platform should be available to everyone as they need it. But I was thinking of providing cute premium features like stickers to enrich their experience. Would you say those are a no-go as well?

Thank you for your kind words and feedback. I think you would be surprised by browsing on r/lonely on Reddit and see how many people want to vent and ask people to talk to them. It can be incredibly lonely when you feel like you are never heard by anyone, and I think this platform can be very helpful to those people.

And there might be a time where you feel you need to be heard, or even find someone who might be going through the same thing that you previously went through, and you can offer help!

Plus, this is the first iteration of the app. We do envision creating a platform for the general public not just for lonely people to discover meaningful connections that you wouldn't have been able to with other apps or just by bumping into strangers in real life.

on Apple's website, it talks about 'Data not linked to you', (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-privacy-details/#l...) and excerpt is here:

- Stripping data of any direct identifiers, such as user ID or name, before collection. - Manipulating data to break the linkage and prevent re-linkage to real-world identities.

Additionally, in order for data not to be linked to a particular user’s identity, you must avoid certain activities after collection:

- You must not attempt to link the data back to the user’s identity. - You must not tie the data to other datasets that enable it to be linked to a particular user’s identity.

We do not attempt to link the data back to user's identity or tie the datasets to enable them to be linked.

If you have a more technical solutions/suggestions, we are all ears. Thank you very much!

We do not have private voice messages yet. All voice messages are public, as in, everyone can listen to them. This way, people who are hesitant to speak can still listen to other people's conversations, and also learn from them.

In the near future, we plan to implement private messaging functions, which will be end-to-end encrypted. Upcoming feature! :)

Here is our privacy page: https://bubblic.co/privacy/

We do not use it to train any models or share the data with ANYONE.

I currently work from home with my wife, we are not incorporated yet. I live in Mountain View, CA right now. Do you suggest that I put my home address there?

We are GDPR compliant. We do not sell or share users' data and we let them know what kind of data we collect for what purposes. Plus, users can delete their data COMPLETELY from our system with a single button within the app. No emailing or calling a number shenanigans.

I am doing my best to help people who feel lonely in today's day and age because I have personally been through it during my time in grad school.

I was going through a long-distance relationship at that time, and the workload was tough during my PhD. I did have friends that I hung out and even went to cafes to study together, but once they got girlfriends and boyfriends, they left me... I was not their priority anymore.

It felt incredibly lonely and I could not get the kind of support from my girlfriend since she was on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I needed someone that I could talk to and do things with, outside of the romantic boundary. I tried looking, but what I found online were all these dating apps that capitalized on precisely the romantically lonely men and women.

I really did not like how the tools that claim to help people find partners and meaningful connections boil people down to simple profiles consisting of several pictures and bullet points of what they are looking for. I think it honestly creates increasing number of people reporting feeling lonely because all these tools overemphasize on vanity and shallow qualities of a person instead of who they are.

I think the web can be a better place for people to find others who they resonate with, and the current offerings just do not cut it. Having personally experienced loneliness and finding no solutions for my problem back then, I vowed to create an app myself that I think can help people find meaningful connections. So, here I am. I quit my job at Apple last year to dive into this full time as I thought about the meaning in life and what I wanted to leave in this world, and I thought solving the problem of loneliness is the most personal and meaningful problem that I want to take on.

Hey there! I am sorry that is happening to you... I just tried on my Pixel 4, and it did not seem to have the problem. Can you try skipping the sign up on the first onboarding page, and try signing up after you are in the app by clicking the top left 'B' icon?

Or, can you try signing up by creating a user ID? We do not sell your data, and your email is NOT linked to your voice notes (they are in separate database and the user IDs are anonymized by hashing). I would really love for you to try it out!

We worked on it for the past 5 months, with me quitting my job at Apple to work on this full time, so it has been quite the journey!

All the voice notes and locations are anonymized, as in, the database for userId and email is separate from anonymized Id linked to the voice and location data.

Specifically, I use AWS Cognito for the email addresses, and DynamoDB for anonymized ID : voice notes and location data.

If you have a better suggestion, please let me know!

Hm.. what do you mean? Did you press 'Enter Bubblic' at the end of the onboarding pages?

I am not sure, but I was actually very surprised by how many supporters actually consistently came on the platform to leave supporting messages to lonely people. At one point, there were more supporters wanting to support than lonely people needing support haha

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 :')

Yes, you can delete ALL your voice data by going to your account settings in the app, and deleting your account. You have full control of your data.

Meanwhile, feel free to create an account and explore the app, even just by listening to other recordings! And only when you feel comfortable sharing your thoughts with your voice, you can participate.

Definitely, opening up to a wider audience is the plan :)

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.

There has not been a need to step in to moderate content so far. I think it is by nature self-policing to an extent more than a forum based on texts because people have to speak with their voice and also share their approximate location.

We do have moderation functions available already by the way of individuals reporting the abusers.

To share briefly our journey, we started by launching this simple website: https://lonelyworld.info as a mini MVP.

Then we got a tremendous response from various forums including Hacker News and Reddit, that we decided to pursue this idea further and develop into an app.

Our team is me, my wife, and a friend from South Africa that I met on the LonelyWorld website! I realize that had I never launched that mini MVP, I wouldn't have met my friend to work on my mission together! The mantra is right: one should always build in public :)

The link is broken. Here is the new link: https://lonelyworld.streamlit.app

I hope people who feel lonely out there can find solace in knowing that they are, in fact, not alone in feeling this way.