

I'm tired of trying to meet new people. So I've built another social network - talhof8
http://blog.interestin.co/post/im-tired-of-trying-to-meet-new-like-minded-people-online-so-ive-built-another-social-network#.UXFm8aJT7GA

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jblok
Everyone, please stop. Seriously, stop. How many more of these things do we
need?

"Find people nearby with similar interests", sounded like a semi-decent
premise 3 or 4 years ago, but no one did it well enough to reach a critical
mass, and nor did the 100 or so clones that followed. I cringe every time I
hear about a startup like this now.

People (maybe just me) don't generally make friends in this way. How many
times have you honestly been walking down the street and thought, "I must find
someone who shares my love of handball as well as Star Wars!" You don't. You
go join a handball club, or you find some nerds that are into sci-fi, and
maybe there might be an overlap. And if not, who gives a shit - there's much
more to liking a person than what their interests are. They might be really
unkind or talk about you behind your back. I'd rather not be friends with them
in that case, even if they love handball and Star Wars more than they love
breathing.

Offering control over your users privacy can not be claimed as a selling
point, as I see so often in social media startups. It is a minimum user
requirement and in some territories, a legal requirement.

I hate to tell anyone that you can't do something, but I think there are so
many more valuable unsolved problems out there.

~~~
talhof8
You see, the goal here isn't to connect you with people who love both x and y,
and so they fit you as potential best friend. The goal here is replace those
tons of friends on your social networks, whom half you (not specifically you
ofcourse) barely know, with people who really interest you and love x, or y,
or even both. Thanks for your comment

~~~
talhof8
And this isn't location based. I've seen too many of those on my iPhone,
claiming to find you some new "BFF's". It isn't the goal

~~~
unalone
Out of curiosity, what's the difference between this and forums which have
many ultraspecific subsections for people to discuss their personal interests?
Is it that this searches for people who have as many overlapping interests
with you as possible?

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drharris
You know, at first I was thinking this is a cheesy idea, especially with it
not really giving anything new. But then I think, what would I pay to find a
friend that truly has overlapping interests? I'd probably pay decent money for
that, because I can't seem to find a "best friend". The people who share my
sports interests don't understand how I can watch a chick flick. The people
who are into programming can't understand my religious views. And those people
don't take kindly to my love for science. And those people don't appreciate my
musical abilities. So on, so forth. Only my wife understands all that, which
is great, but I need a friend outside that. My existing friends are good for
diversity, but nobody understands me enough to really be my best friend. So,
in short, I'd pay for something that let me find someone who can actually
understand me. Call it "friend dating".

~~~
sixQuarks
Are you saying you're religious, yet love science? I'd like to have a
discussion with you.

~~~
drharris
Not sure if this leads to trolling, but yes, extremely, on both accounts. I'm
both a Christian (even something of a creationist) and manage to love science.
I admit it's not a common combination (hence my post), but it does exist. :)

~~~
unalone
I'm curious. What does "something of a creationist" entail? Is this a Deist
sort of creationism, or are you closer to biblical literalism?

~~~
drharris
It means I believe at the very least, a creator was responsible for initial
life. I also believe that evolution is either a guided process or that the
existing evidence can also point to creation. Do not believe in young earth.
Do not believe the creator started it and has not intervened since.

~~~
unalone
Curious! I can't say I agree with that – at least, not the way you just
phrased it; could just be linguistic ambiguity – but it's interesting
nonetheless. I have to say, that's a mindset I don't usually expect on Hacker
News; now I'm wondering just how diverse the beliefset of this community is.

~~~
learc83
My personal belief is that the earth was created as if it were much older than
it actually is, although their really wouldn't be much of a difference to us.

For example, if God created the first tree, just snapped his fingers and poof,
there it is full sized. Would that tree have tree rings? I think it would.

~~~
unalone
What would be the point of creating something and then faking its age? Is it a
test, for us to ignore empirical evidence and determine that God made it
anyway? Or are you suggesting that, perhaps, the world began with us humans,
and that the universe pre-humanity was manufactured to seem like it gave rise
to is (but it couldn't have, because it started with us)?

I'm interested in where such a belief comes from.

~~~
learc83
I don't think that is was manufactured to trick us, but that for whatever
reason the simulation needed a past. Imagine the world is a recursive
algorithm and it start running at n = 1, you need to define n = 0 for it to
make any sense.

Tree rings are needed to support the tree and would occur once the simulation
started running anyway, so God could either create two classes of tree, or use
the more elegant solution (to my mind) of having that tree appear the same as
if it had grown.

My reason for believing this is that I think it's a more elegant solution
(that is just based on my personal perception of elegance) and that God
decided the world should be in a certain state before humans arrived, so
either he could run the simulation for billions of years, or he could just
fast forward as if it had ran for billions of years. Either one works, but
since there were no people around to experience time why bother with actually
running it (or the opposite argument, why not actually run it).

Another reason why I think the simulation was needed in the first place,
because it moves the limits of our knowledge further away, and gives us more
room to explore.

Imagine if God decided humans needed an energy source, so he put a magic black
liquid under the ground with no explanation. We'd find it, and that would
pretty much be the end of it--we could go no further. However, if he instead
ran set up a simulation and ran it(or skipped ahead) to create oil, we can try
to figure out where oil came from.

Basically we have a whole rich and complex simulated past to explore before we
hit the brick wall of--God did it.

------
kozikow
I had this idea when I was employed at Facebook. I was even considering doing
something similar to it on the Hackathon. I believe in your idea and if
Facebook won't do, in my opinion it it will be big (I didn't see anyone there
interested in picking up this idea, so I don't think they will).

Graph search solves part of this problem - on example you can search "Friends
of my friends, who like tennis, programming and Game of thrones". The problem
here is that it's awkward to contact these people - you won't message person
"hey, I found out that we have similar interests, we may be friends". The
whole problem is "breaking ice". The fact that you know who could be a good
friend doesn't solve this problem, because you don't have a good way of
meeting these people.

I had a few ideas how to solve it, any wasn't perfect. Core thought behind is
that you usually meet new people not through internet, but either on parties
or by introduction through common friend. Maybe you will have any use from
them:

1\. Facebook or your site could algorithmically organize events for people.
But honestly I don't know if people would be interested in attending such
parties. You would sign up for a party and Facebook would find ideal group of
strangers, that according to some machine learning would be your ideal
friends. Having enough data is is possible to make awesome selection, but I
don't know if people would be interested in attending such parties. Some
slight modification is organizing "lunches". Imagine you are working in big
office or at big school campus. Then your site could find ideal people to eat
lunch with.

2\. This is slight modification of point 2. There are tons of public events
and venues. You could suggest what are good public parties and venues where I
could find the most likely minded people. This is probably the least awkward
option, but it is also the least accurate in finding likely minded people.

3\. Introductions. Likely minded people will probably be close to you in your
social graph. There's a chance that you have common friend. He could get a
suggestion from Facebook or your site - "Hey X, we found out that your friends
Y and Z should know each other. Do you want to introduce them to each other?".
But here I am again sceptical if people would do it.

4\. Having option of posting a status to result of graph search query. Then
you could on example post a status "Hey, who wants to play tennis?". Problem
here is that to initiate a conversation another person needs to write a
message to you. Messaging a stranger is always awkward and in my opinion won't
work, unless there will be big mental shift among people.

I believe this is a big problem for a lot of people nowadays, especially
introverted people not good at making new connections. I believe in you, good
luck :).

~~~
talhof8
Thank you very much for your details feedback! Much appreciated!!! I'd love to
talk further, if you'd like to as well, you can find me at contact AT
interestin.co

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ollysb
I think meetup.com fills this role fairly well at the moment. There's
definitely room for improvement but if you're looking for a group of people
that want to play some tennis, go climbing etc. then it's a pretty good bet.

~~~
hasenj
Meetup.com is pretty good but there's plenty of room for competition.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
While there's room for competition, it does have the chicken-and-egg problem.
People who create meetup groups need to know there are people to join the
group and people who want to go to meetups need to go to a place with a wide
variety of groups. That's why it's hard to do a Craigslist or eBay competitor.

~~~
csmatt
This is very true. If there are only a handful of people in a small town who
have your interest, you're kinda out of luck with meetup.

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nahname
I have been thinking about something similar to this for a while. The problem
is the negative stigma of hunting for friends. That makes it difficult to get
people to want to signup. The best potential candidates would already have
lots of friends and wouldn't need your service.

However, this would be immensely helpful in finding new friends, especially if
you just moved to a new area. Even moving within a city, it is difficult to
maintain close connections to your friends if you don't live near them.

Best of luck

~~~
hasenj
> The problem is the negative stigma of hunting for friends. That makes it
> difficult to get people to want to signup.

I think it'd be interesting to research why that is and trying to come up with
some solutions. (This problem is also present in dating sites).

I think meetup.com's approach avoids this problem because you're not
explicitly "fishing" for friends.

~~~
resu_nimda
Agreed. I strongly feel the stigma against dating sites, and still refuse to
use them, but Meetup is a great resource I don't even think twice about using.

I just can't get over the thought of "well, I can't do it in real life, so
let's take the easy way and throw it up on the internet and see what sticks."

The funny thing is, relying on chance to put you in the same room with the
right person, let alone identify and connect with them, is really inefficient.
Current dating sites notwithstanding, the internet has a huge potential to
optimize this process. And yet, it just feels so _wrong_. You are trying to
start an intimate relationship through such a clinical and impersonal
interface, and the vision of someone sitting there browsing through hundreds
of candidates "asynchronously" at your leisure is unsettling to me.

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d0m
I'm really surprised that this post was able to reach the front page with "I'm
building another social network". That being said.. here's a startup that's
trying to deal with this problem:
<http://www.joinbunch.com/group/28/startups/1/>

Still, I find it unclear if the goal is to meet people online or offline..? Or
why I would like to meet someone sharing the same
religion/book/movies/job/etc... My startup buddies don't share all the same
religions, and my starcraft buddies don't share my startup enthusiast.. but so
what?

If the goal is to meet new people sharing your passion, just join the next
meetup or events related to that passion..

If the goal is to meet new people _online_ sharing your passion then.. I guess
that's an interesting problem to tackle. There are lots of verticals going
after this (I.e. finding a fitness buddy). The only difference with yours
would be "having all these in the same feed". Is that enough of a value
proposition?

A friend of mine created something that could clearly hit that market idea..
still unclear if he wants to go in that direction.

~~~
talhof8
The goal is to replace those big numbers of "friends" in your social networks,
with your true friends and people that interest you, if you become their
friend - it's even better.

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cupcake-unicorn
This would be great, if you could pull it off. I'm stuck in a bad situation
like this - most sites connecting you to a single person are dating oriented,
and that is HELL as a female user, and otherwise I have made a little bit of
use of meetup.com and couchsurfing.org, but I do find it lacking. The issues
with meetup.com is that you have to tolerate sometimes awful group meetups,
and one person will come every time and be really awkward or something...I'm
much better person to person. When I've used OkCupid to meet people, guys
assume they're on a date and start doing a ton of inappropriate crap even
though we're just meeting for coffee. Would love to see the niche filled, and
please see if you can do what you can for gender balancing/creepers, which is
a huge problem for female users of such sites.

~~~
talhof8
Thanks!

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csmatt
I've been working on <http://www.socialocale.com> . It's interest and location
based. Judges at Startup Weekend hated it. What do you guys think? Is it worth
pursuing? Here's a screenshot of what it looks like on the inside
<http://imgur.com/ciPp9pA>

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harlox
I would avoid calling it a social network, simply because of the increasing
"social network fatigue." Even when fatigue isn't tangible (and I don't think
it yet is for social networks) it can mean the difference between a potential
user visiting your site and possibly signing up, or never even clicking the
link.

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cleis
I think this sounds really cool. It would be really interesting to get REALLY
specific into your interests and see if anyone matched up with you.

It's great that it's not designed to be a dating site, I take it there'll be
no pictures or 'how would you describe your body type?' data fields, then?

~~~
talhof8
Thanks! LOL no "body type" things. I'm still in looking to come up with more
features, but I'm not sure weather you'll be able to press a button saying
"find me a friend" like dating sites do, that matches you up. I'd love to
discuss over your ideas/everything you'd like to see in the site via email as
well - contact AT interestin.co

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syed123
We think we are on track with <http://www.LetsLunch.com> to cater to people
meeting during lunch hour. It is a least friction way for you to meet new
people. Tell us what you think about it? so far 12,000 lunches setup and going
up!

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tejay
I remember PG interviewing Zuck for Startup School 2012, and Zuck mentioning
that while Facebook solved the "How to connect with existing friends" problem,
it wasn't really focused on solving the "How to meet new friends" problem. So,
nice work!

~~~
talhof8
Thanks :)

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GuiA
Interesting concept, I'm looking forward to the first release.

> it's not a dating site

The skeptic in me says that if it works to some scale, it will quickly become
one :)

~~~
talhof8
Thanks for your feedback! It's one of my biggest concerns actually. I really
don't want it to become another dating site. Using your (the users) help and
feedback, I'll try to get pass this.

~~~
hasenj
Actually it would be nice if it becomes "implicitly" a dating site, but not
explicitly.

Just like how in real life you can hang out with a mixed group of people where
implicitly/secretly everyone knows a part of it is fishing for a relationship.

But explicitly and on the surface it's only about finding friends and like
minded people.

~~~
GuiA
The problem is that offline, there is an implicit vetting system.

I.e. if in your group of friends, one of the guy is always trying to hook up
with a different girl everytime, quickly people will stop inviting him to
events.

However, some social networks that have become "implicit dating websites"
(meetup.com comes to my mind to some extent), there is no such self-regulatory
system.

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iterationx
If you want to meet new people is the solution really to spend EVEN MORE time
on the computer?

~~~
talhof8
I see your point and tend to agree. The right title is "I'm trying to meet new
people online" except it's too long. I'd like to try and make social
networking more efficient so people will spend even less time online. We'll
out it'll work.

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GotAnyMegadeth
I'm interested

~~~
talhof8
Thanks! For any question please don't hesitate to contact me via contact AT
interestin.co or even via Quora (see the link posted on the blog)

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jdori
Sounds like Reddit++ to me

