I thought they were related to Ripple Labs (https://ripple.com/) and the Ripple cryptocurrency due to the recent Bitcoin and cryptocurrency craze; however it seems they are unrelated and just happened to hit upon the same name for their chat app.
I would expect people hooking up nearby would identify themselves a little specifically - I'd be "the guy in the tux with the red carnation". A spammer from across the globe isn't going identify themselves with a description fitting the woman in the table over. I mean, she would be "blue and white scarf" rather than "nearby pretty girl" (unless it's a spammer, yeah).
Well, 'nearby pretty girl' would not describer herself as such, but would have a plausible looking profile picture. :) Also the distances are a bit bigger than the bar you're sitting in (up to a few kilometers).
Hmm, the same reason you wanna keep your conversations private?
I can think of few cases, like if you want to giving nearby people coupons, I mean really nearby, not random guy on the other side of the planet trying to re-sell your coupons.
How to use a non-hackish, non-intrusive way to make content exclusive to local users?
Providing an ad-hoc wifi is not the solution because people may need public Internet activities and a device can connect only to one access point at a time.
At least for now, it's not meant for private/sensitive messages.
We're more focusing on allowing people to join chatrooms which the location information are to help people easily find them, there's also an invitation feature to let you tweet your room and people can join all over the world.
Who cares? If I'm on a train heading home, I don't want my conversation terminated because I get too far away. Just link the rooms to one or more relevant locations so people can find them initially, then let people favourite them or whatever so they can rejoin later without having to be in that location.
I remember seeing this when it was announced but didn't bother using it because I was too lazy to sign up an account. I like that this one doesn't require an account to engage allowing me to try before I sign up
I thought about this idea myself. But then I noticed there were tons of good apps doing exactly this. This stopped me from implementing it, because i would not be "first app in the market", because I woudnt have the unfair advantage of being first.
Yes this. Actually the first time I came across a (variation of) this idea, it was years ago and brought up by a co-worker.
I have been tinkering with the idea, and also came to the same conclusion, that virality / marketing in general were probably going to play the part hugely, as like you've stated, this has been done a lot..
Maybe it's something that people do not want.
I could see this having great potential in the dating/flirt sectors obvously ;) But you could also imagine things like "shit I think I left my jacket at x/y, anyone found it? " at a festival.
Anonimity would probably be mandatory for success.
You guys should check out Yobongo. A similar location-based chat app which has since closed down post-seed round. You might like to see what worked / didn't work for them.
Google has in a vague and useless way attempted something like it in Google+ on mobile - there's a "Nearby" option that at this point appears to be people within the same metro area.
I've been using the beta since it came out and have loved the way the app has grown. I'm really interested in seeing its potential in conferences or large towns.
It's small and well focused, they've opened some code from it and seem to be doing a good job of being active in chat. Give it a try.
I'm not sure about the timeline who released first, but there is popcorn chat app which allows to chat with people who are within one mile from you it was featured here a while back. The functionality seems to be the same less or more.
Hmm, popcorn is a single chatroom within a location. Ripple is multiple chatrooms within a location, but based on a topic. There is no signup. That actually creates some really interesting use cases. Hopefully, you'll decide to try it out! :)
Reminds me of Trepia which tried a similar thing only on desktops, 10 years ago. It died, unsurprisingly. I had been wondering when someone would revive the idea.
...just kidding, I am an asocial person, I don't speak with other people.