
Show HN: Popcorn Messaging – Anonymously chat with people within 1 mile - drum
https://appsto.re/us/bTI0Q.i
======
danudey
A lot of the people whom I met in Vancouver via Twitter I actually met via an
app called Twinkle, which was essentially a wrapper around Twitter that added
this sort of geographically-located content, and which was released shortly
after the iPhone 3G and iOS 2.0 added location-based functionality (but long
before Twitter did).

Basically, Twinkle could work on its own or with a Twitter account. When you
posted a message, it would go to Twinkle's servers along with geolocation
information, and then Twinkle would post it to Twitter in turn. Other Twinkle
users could see your post via Twinkle's servers, as well as your actual
Twitter feed. It was a fantastic way to discover new local users, and you
could scale the radius up or down (from I think 1km to 10km).

I know one person in particular I ended up seeing in my stream a lot because
we both lived in one area and worked in another area, and lots of others just
worked in the same area as I did. You could easily Twitter-follow them, which
let you take those relationships out of Twinkle.

For someone who was completely new to the city and the community, it was a
great way to start getting connected to people in the area.

~~~
SeoxyS
Wow… I had no idea people still remembered Twinkle. I was one of the engineers
at Tapulous, back in the day, and worked briefly on Twinkle.

That service was actually a huge disaster for us. The users were mostly
tweens, and we had a huge Chartroulette-esque problem with child porn, where
users would expose themselves through the service. Our community management
team is probably scarred for life. Our engineers also hated it, because its
backend was horrendous and we had a lot of availability issues; the service
would go down constantly.

The very last thing I did at Tapulous / Disney (on my last day) was kill off
Twinkle, shutting down the servers. Everybody was quite happy to see it gone.

~~~
hrrsn
I definitely remember Twinkle! I used it daily.

------
oofabz
It would be cool if the "radius" automatically scaled to ensure there are not
too many or too few people in the chat. This could be accomplished with a
Voronoi diagram.

~~~
drum
hmm, the 1 mile radius is important to me. psychologically, knowing that the
people you're talking to are within walking distance is exciting

~~~
tempestn
Less exciting if there's no one using the app within that radius though, no?

~~~
drum
there are a million and one apps that offer the ability to chat with people.
if it's a concern people can use one of those

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Wow - sounds kinda hostile and doesn't really address the original point
(sorry if I'm misreading your response). What's so special about the exact
mile radius that couldn't be, say, a bit more flexible if conditions aren't
perfect? Couldn't the app expand that to a mile and a half if no-one's present
within a mile? Etc. I think that's the original point that was being made.

~~~
drum
sorry if it sounded hostile, i appreciated the comment! my point was that the
integrity of the app relies on a fixed radius. im not opposed to increasing
the fixed radius initially while there arent a lot of users. however expanding
the radius according to nearby users makes the location aspect less relevant.
if the nearest user is 20 miles away than they should probably use another
app.

~~~
crindy
Just wanted to chime in and say I get you, man. "Chat with people within 1
mile" is just a better thing than "Chat with people within a radius adjusted
based on how many users are online nearby."

~~~
tempestn
Yep, that's fair enough. And you certainly don't have to make an app that's
useful for everyone everywhere. Still, getting it to catch on will be hard
enough even if people can find others to chat with, it makes sense to do what
you can to help with that. How about keeping the tagline the same, and keeping
it at 1 mile as long as there's someone there to chat with. But if not, you
could prompt the user: _There 's no one else online within a mile. Want to
look a bit further away?_ Or something along those lines.

------
nilkn
I'm curious about how this actually works, geometrically. Example:

A <\----> B <\----> C

Those are three people. Imagine each segment is 1 mile long. So A can see B; B
can see C; but A can't see C. If B and C are having a conversation, does A see
B talking to someone who effectively does not exist?

~~~
drum
turns out you're right. anybody have suggestions on how to fix this?

~~~
btgeekboy
Why not group people into free-form clusters based on user density? So, if you
have 5 people that are effectively in the same building, and 3 people that are
outside of it in various directions, group those 3 into the 5. This has the
effect of forming virtual chat rooms that come and go.

Not sure what you're using on the backend, but if it's PostGIS... here you go:
[http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/11567/spatial-
cluster...](http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/11567/spatial-clustering-
with-postgis)

------
jcutrell
I almost created one of these, except for news. Hyper-local news is largely
missing - I was going to mash up Twitter, Instagram, and in-app updates to
help people get a sense of what's happening immediately around them.

This is actually a great idea to solve this problem though.

The news use-case is for city life. When you hear a gunshot or a car accident
occurs on your street or you see smoke off in the distance or you hear music
playing nearby or you see a drove of cop cars driving by - how can you find
out more about that?

News doesn't have a hyper local channel, but it could.

This app points at a bigger market - the "directly nearby" market - that
really has only been fully tapped by mapping/location-sourcing applications.

~~~
drum
thanks! one of our biggest goals was to maintain privacy by only requiring a
username to sign up.

~~~
muratmutlu
And we made InstaBAM for finding instagram users and photos near you (or
anywhere on a map) [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/instabam!-explore-
instagram/...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/instabam!-explore-
instagram/id437615875)

------
angersock
So, talked with some folks about an idea similar to this a few months ago.

As the conversation evolved, they came up with "tagging" a given chat room to
denote what was in it, and letting people choose their own names...some kind
of "handle" on the identified "channel".

The proposed messaging fabric would use servers hosted in the cloud, each
functioning as sort of a repeater to their client mobile devices.

A sort of internet-relayed chat, if you will.

There is nothing new under the sun.

EDIT:

The location functionality of this could be bodged together really quickly
with the geo pg extensions, I'd bet.

~~~
christiangenco
After seeing the criticisms of Dropbox[1] on Hacker News, I'm much more
analytical of the stereotypical "critical top post(s)" when introducing a new
project. Getting candid, constructive critical feedback is certainly one of
the values of posting on HN, but criticising that a product or service is just
a combination of known technologies is an incredibly weak criticism: it could
be applied to _any_ innovation.

Here's my litmus test for whether something has already been done: if I asked
ten random people to solve the problem this thing is trying to solve, could
they name a product that solves it?

Ex:

* "How would you have a folder on your computer that stays synchronized across multiple computers and is accessible online?" -> Dropbox or Google Drive (not an acceptable answer: "I'd set up rsync to run as a daemon syncing to a VPS on each computer")

* "How would you send public messages to people you didn't know in close proximity?" -> Popcorn Messaging?

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

~~~
angersock
Don't get me wrong, it's a nifty little app.

I'm just pointing out that I heard an idea a few months ago that was nearly
identical. Our advice to the folks was "Yeah, this is cool--go code it!".

These toy campus apps are really great for building experience and learning;
that said, they're still just that: toy campus apps.

The obligatory "but but but facebook" rebuttal is that it was a matter of
timing more than anything else.

~~~
zackbrown
Don't you think calling this a "little app" and "toy campus app" is a little
bit condescending? And that dismissing it as a simple rehashing of other ideas
is not actually constructive? How many successful new products/services in the
last decade _aren 't_ just rehashes of existing ideas?

I'd say kudos to the author for actually rolling up your sleeves and making
this idea happen; it's way harder and more admirable IMO to do that than it is
to be an armchair critic or armchair ideationist.

~~~
angersock
Would you like me to give you some Ruby code that would emulate this
functionality? I am fairly sure the size of the program would be less than 300
LOC, tops.

That is indeed a "little app". The 30-something line regex parser Pike wrote
([http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/bea...](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/beautiful.html))
? Also a "little app".

There is no shame in solving a small problem, solving it well, and solving it
concisely.

As far as being a "rehashing of other ideas"\--how many hackathons have you
been to on college campuses, and/or how many students doing mobile dev stuff
have you chatted with, and/or how many people with a great idea for a local
messaging app have you met?

This is not, will not, and never has been a novel idea. That doesn't make it
worthless, that doesn't make it pointless, but it also doesn't make it _new_.

As for the "toy campus app": that's what this is...a toy application (small,
concise, single-function) targeting primarily college kids (see the
comparisons in this very thread to JuicyCampus).

I honestly don't understand why you're getting so defensive just because I'm
not getting down on my hands and knees to praise the obvious genius and
ingenuity and novelty that went into this (this is sarcasm, by the way).

I can respect it as a work on its own merits, but I will not afford it more
than that.

~~~
danneu
A recap of your pleasant original comment:

    
    
        "Don't get me wrong, it's a nifty little app. 
         You probably learned a lot! That said, it's still 
         just a toy campus app."
    

A morsel of value from the world squandered.

I'll bite your offer for you to mock it up in Ruby real quick. The problem
with the "it's easy and I could do it" dismissal is that, even though you
could, you didn't.

Maybe you can team up with this guy[1]. You can probably even reuse his
repo[2].

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501)
[2]:
[http://code.google.com/p/hackerexchange/](http://code.google.com/p/hackerexchange/)

~~~
angersock
[https://gist.github.com/crertel/7244841](https://gist.github.com/crertel/7244841)

There you go--left out the boring HTML scaffolding (original chat example
modified from here: [https://github.com/igrigorik/em-
websocket](https://github.com/igrigorik/em-websocket)).

EDIT: It's super MVP, but the concept is there.

A very, very simple addition would have the server echo back to the clients
the lat/long pairs in question to dynamically update, say, a Google Maps
window.

For real usage, I'd use a PostGIS query--something like this:
[http://unserializableone.blogspot.com/2007/02/using-
postgis-...](http://unserializableone.blogspot.com/2007/02/using-postgis-to-
find-points-of.html) .

EDIT2:

Looks like we're both Texans--if you're ever in Houston, I'd be glad to grab a
beer with you.

------
jeanbebe
The market problem is a very real reality. Popcorn is pretty simple, you need
to invite you friends - but do you have to do that for every area to unlock
that area?

We've been working on the same problem for a few months now but haven't quick
cracked the market issue. Our app, racut, has a similar feature called Shout
where you can say something and it appears over a 6 mile radius.

In addition to Shout you can also start a private conversation, or have a
group conversation outside of the Shout stream.

It's good to see others entering the space.

~~~
jaredsohn
From my own research of the space while working on near.im, it seems like the
companies that have done the best are the ones who make agreements with events
(i.e. a networking app for people at a conference.) This is great because it
has a clear source of monetization and has the added bonus of having the
conference advertise that the app exists so that people might actually use it.

~~~
jeanbebe
Seems logical to partner with a physical event or space, because it helps to
provide some of that social proof that people often crave to use something.

I think of it like a restaurant. You're probably going to eat at the
restaurant that is busy, not the one that is empty.

------
constantize
I also did a little adventure into local-anon-messaging, but my solution was
to use wireless access points and udp for text, relying on a server only for
image share. In retrospect it is primitive and ugly as sin, but I was excited
about it so I put it on the app store:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.constantiz...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.constantize.blip&hl=en)

The only problem? wireless routers that block udp ;)

------
bcherry
JuicyCampus for the mobile age. And this time administrators banning it from
campus wi-fi won't do any good, with everyone on 3G and LTE.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JuicyCampus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JuicyCampus)

------
wellboy
That´s very exciting.

Introducing restrictions like Twitter with 140 characters is very powerful.

How to get users apart from PR? Spend $500 of Facebook ads per city, that
gives you around 300 users. Done. Prove for one city raise Angel Money and do
it for other cities.

You have something really powerful in your hands, however it might take a
while until you really find what it is exactly. Take your time to find it. In
terms of what features to add, as you read in many blog posts that the most
important thing about finding new features is to learn how to say no. Your app
needs to do one thing really well and only that one thing.

My gut tells me that there needs to be an upvote mechanism or an ability to
communicate with individual users. However, then it would be whisper already.
But something in that direction.

Good luck!

------
jaredsohn
[http://near.im/](http://near.im/) is a mobile web implementation (in Meteor)
of the same concept that I work on occasionally, although the frontend needs
to be redone. No longer requires a Facebook login.

------
jmarbach
Really like this idea. There's been a deficit of anonymous messaging services
in the college market since JuicyCampus went down.

------
quackware
I remember making an app similar to this a few years ago. Would automatically
create a room if one did not exist, scale-able search range, anonymous users
with an option of providing a name, all relied on a jaber server hosted in a
micro aws instance. Was a fun project, but the critical mass factor makes
things like this very hard to create.

If anyone's curious, github source:

[https://github.com/quackware/Crowdsource](https://github.com/quackware/Crowdsource)

------
zoba
In the early 2000s there was a device/toy called the Cybiko
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko))
which offered similar functionality. It was amazing in theory, however,
adoption was never very high so it never took off.

~~~
angersock
There were also something known as Citizen-Band radios, but that was a long
time before all this computer nonsense.

------
tsheng
My location isn't unlocked yet, but this has the ingredients for brilliance.
Marries the desire for privacy with the desire to feel connected to a local
community... without being Whisper.

A great example of digital technology facilitating in person communication.

Look forward to playing around with it.

~~~
drum
hey thanks a lot! thats pretty much the same way i look at

------
austinl
The chicken and egg problem can be pretty frustrating with an app like this.
There needs to be a critical mass of users in a certain area for it to be
reliable, which is easier in some places than others. Best of luck though.

~~~
zackbrown
One option for a location-aware system like this: the chatroom-defining radius
could be adjusted elastically to make it so there are always enough people to
chat with, even if the nearest is many miles away.

------
willchilcutt
How will I know my area is unlocked unless I'm constantly checking the app?

Also, does it take -just two- people to unlock? I'm guessing so because there
is no way anyone within a one mile radius also has this app.

~~~
drum
yep, just two! i just pushed an update that includes push notifications. you
might need to log out and back in, but it should show the prompt. from there
im coding in a notification for when the area opens

~~~
willchilcutt
Just logged out and logged back in, but no alert view for receiving
notifications. Do I need to create a new account?

~~~
drum
dang, friend reported the same issue. not sure why they're not going.

------
thibaultCha
This app clearly reminds me of the device John McAfee promised us:
[http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4786008/john-mcafee-d-
cent...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4786008/john-mcafee-d-central-
device-avoid-nsa-private-network)

"the device [...] has a range of around three blocks. Everyone in those three
blocks can then communicate with each other and that will obviously change as
users move in and out of a local area."

Will definitively try to maybe see people from HN in Paris.

------
ddoolin
I'm kinda sad I didn't capitalize on this idea when I had it awhile back. I
may still. I really like radius-based anonymous messaging.

Good to see the idea getting some attention anyway!

~~~
drum
dave? pretty sure i met you a few times in SF at the TRUE car meetups. thanks
for the comment!

------
soci
Great idea, nobody in my area yet so I cannot check the execution. (Barcelona,
Europe)

Please, don't let this become something bad as happened with ChatRoulette when
it became viral.

~~~
draugadrotten
The grindr app is very popular in Barcelona and will let you chat with people
nearby in seconds.

------
Zakuzaa
Why does it require iOS 7.0?

~~~
MProgrammer
Because it's a new app, and actively doing work to support anything older than
iOS 7 is a waste of time.

~~~
Zakuzaa
Unless the app uses some iOS 7.0 specific API, it makes sense to support at
least 6.xx considering 7.xx is just over a month old.

~~~
alex_c
The UI changes in iOS 7 make supporting both 6 and 7 more of a pain than most
previous iOS releases. Certainly possible and not a huge deal, but it doesn't
just come down to iOS 7 specific APIs.

------
renownedmedia
This reminds me a lot of a webapp I built called Whisper:

[http://zyu.me:5000/](http://zyu.me:5000/)
[https://github.com/tlhunter/whisper](https://github.com/tlhunter/whisper)

You aren't limited to just one mile though, you can change the loudness, which
affects the duration, and it's anonymous.

------
hallman76
I really hope this takes off - it would be great to use at events!

Yobongo was trying to get this going a while back. For some reason they
focused on specific cities (Austin, NYC, and SF) instead of using a generic
1-mile approach like this. I was always disappointed that they got aquirehired
- their app died on the vine.

~~~
michaelx
Agree. It could be very useful at events and a good addition to Twitter's
nearby feature, because of the intention to actually meet people.

------
AbhishekBiswal
Creates a chat room with all the people around in it or it just randomly
connects you to a single person?

~~~
adamb_
Assuming it's a one mile radius for everyone, making it a chat room the app
would either need to intersect or union everyone's area... This would make the
novelty of the app unusable or pointless, respectively.

~~~
melvinmt
Yeah, I wonder how that works actually. If radius A intersects with B and C
but B and C don't intersect with each other, do B and C see A chatting to
someone who they don't see?

~~~
mforbes
That's how mobile radios have always worked... CB, FRS, GMRS, etc. Definitely
not a new problem. Repeaters can mitigate the problem somewhat.

------
wingerlang
There is an app like this (I think - as I can't download this one) called
WeChat which has a similar functionality. Not sure about the popularity in the
US but in Asia it is huge and the "people nearby" feature is very fun.

------
jbrooksuk
I just got the username "James". This never happens.

If you can solve the "AB—BC" problem, then you'll have a really powerful
application that'll easily get some investments, you just need to market it
right.

~~~
retube
what's the AB-BC problem?

~~~
jbrooksuk
As described here,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642919)

------
Abundnce10
Is this available on Android?

~~~
jaseemabid
Yes, there are 100x android devices in places like India compared to iOS
devices.

------
notdonspaulding
Screenshot has a typo "...with people _within in_ a 1-mile..."

~~~
drum
ahh, crap, thanks for pointing that out

------
jv22222
Revenue possibilities for this app:

1) Give it to participants at conferences. You could partner with conference
promoters and advertisers

2) Partner with baseball and football stadiums and "teams"

3) Partner with bands and gigs

------
jbrooksuk
Some things I've noticed:

\- Push notifications are much needed.

\- I logged out, but now I can't log back in.

\- I'm unable to send more than one message at a time, but it's complaining
that I need to wait 2 seconds.

------
languagehacker
This looks really nice! I was very impressed at the download speed, so good
job on that one.

All I'm really missing is something telling me if anyone is nearby. That's
probably not easy.

------
ecesena
Were you guys at the YC startup school? I remember talking with someone about
a similar product, although the target market was slightly different...

------
MProgrammer
The app is pretty bare bones, but it has promise.

Localization request: for anywhere but en_US, replace "1 mile" with "1.6 km"
=)

~~~
wtbob
I use en_UK, dollars, miles and Fahrenheit (and Rankine) degrees.

------
grigio
There is also [http://geospot.meteor.com](http://geospot.meteor.com) with auto
purge.

------
mikeflores23
Well, we had this on the roadmap for www.wobbleapp.me. Will be interesting to
see the reception in advance.

------
chris_engel
Well, I would have tried it, but upon installation, it says: requires iOS7.

Sorry, not going to happen :)

------
dzink
Great idea! Be careful about nefarious use (aka sex offenders) if that's
possible.

------
shellehs
I tried to search in App Store on my iPad, it showed me no result ?

------
daveambrose
waiting for my location to be unlocked, i.e. midtown Manhattan

~~~
daveambrose
so, a few thoughts now that we have a room created for midtown NYC:

1\. no push notifications? seems like a no brainer to have this when a new
user enters the "room" (i'm calling these chat spaces that) and when a new
message appears. suspect you'll get more re-engagement

2\. why do I have a ribbon next to my username? see:
[https://twitter.com/daveambrose/status/395630523961577473](https://twitter.com/daveambrose/status/395630523961577473)

3\. photos! would be good to share media in addition to just text. maybe for a
v2

~~~
nickdoesdesign
On top of that, @replies would be awesome as well. We already have a nice Back
Bay/Cambridge/Boston chatroom going that is going along fine, but we have
already naturally used @replies since we are so used to them.

~~~
drum
yea definitely sounds necessary. im just wondering - lets say you leave the 1
mile area, somebody @ replies you, when you open the app you'll be in a
totally new spot and the message will be at the old spot.

------
mrdazm
I wonder what the architecture for the messaging looks like.

------
smtbsrn
it would be great to see closest online person to chat if there is no one in
1-mile. (Of course chat will be inactivated with that person)

------
fyolnish
black status bar text on dark red background, this needs to change. But a very
neat idea! Already found some people to chat with in Tokyo

------
jmacd
CB Radio

