
Plague - jamesjyu
http://plague.io/
======
devindotcom
_More like Vague amirite!_

But seriously, I am unclear on pretty much every aspect of this. Even the
screenshots give very little info. I don't know if I'm going to need to sign
up for an account, or whether I'd be receiving "infections" from Portland and
Boise or just up the block here in Seattle. And since I'm guessing 90% of
these items are going to originate on the wider net to begin with, or be
posted there simultaneously, the benefit to me seems dubious at best.

A more limited version that only sends stuff over local wifi or using local
wifi as a beacon to make an ad hoc connection between "carriers" would be
cool, though. More hyperlocal, you can be sure if the thing has only taken two
or three steps, it was someone nearby who made it. Maybe that's how it works;
there's no way to know for sure and I don't really plan to find out!

~~~
sethammons
The first thing I thought of was something I saw at a weekend hack event: in a
disaster or when no network can be found, it looks for nearby phones over
blutooth and propogates messages until the original message eventually finds a
phone to send out a communication over data or wifi.

~~~
comrh
This sounds so interesting. Any more info (where you saw it or name)?

~~~
fastball
FireChat does this. Not sure it was the aforementioned LAHacks project though.

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pavel_lishin
Since the page itself is useless: this is like Tinder for reddit's r/funny
subreddit.

No account creation, so it's probably just tied to your device - sort of like
Yik Yak, I guess. Things seem to be geographically correlated, though I
imagine that the more 'viral' a thing is, presumably the further it can
spread.

edit: I guess you can create an account, but it's not required to 'infect'
crap.

At least here in NYC, it seems like one user is generating 99% of all content.
A third of it is "art", a third of it is gifs of girls twerking, and another
third is just celebrity snapshots.

~~~
runn1ng
You have to have an account for "creating" content. Not for infecting.

------
pstavro
hi all,

I've been working on a similar concept called Ripple, and launched 2 days ago.
I heard of Plague days after submitting my app to the iOS store, and found it
to be a bit different from what I want to focus on.

I do think it's possible to create a community with this type of concept
without all the clutter, and have it simultaneously focus on local (city or
neighborhood wide) events and news.

Ripple allows users to only submit text-based content for now, and presents
all content in table form instead of individual cards. We've found that this
combination really focuses the type of content shared as well as allows users
to browse content and spread "ripples" they truly find engaging. There is also
a bit of a difference with how ripples are spread versus how plague infects
people. Ripples are received by users only once.

Though we are at the beginning of our user base building and want many users
on Ripple, we are also promoting this in specific cities and communities to
have people share local news that matters amongst each other.

Check it out here: [http://getkefi.com/ripple](http://getkefi.com/ripple) I'd
love to hear all your feedback and thoughts.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Consider picking a different name; Ripple is already used:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_%28payment_protocol%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_%28payment_protocol%29)

~~~
colmvp
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. When I think of Ripple I think of
the payment protocol and I'm not even that tech savvy.

~~~
pstavro
Hello colmvp,

Yes, there are a couple of products out there with the name Ripple, but I
don't think the vast majority of people know any of them, including this.

If this does turn out to be a problem, I'll rename in a heartbeat!

~~~
bojo
I've never heard of a product/protocol/whatever named Ripple, which might not
mean much due to the fact that I am a random internet person. By all means
stick with it, sounds like the name definitely applies to the product.

------
ssivark
The beauty of the internet is that physical/geographic distance is not the
deciding factor any more. Two people far separated by geography can be very
close online. So why would an internet-enabled app re-introduce artificial
geographic rigidity?

~~~
ianferrel
There are times when geographic locality is the thing you want to filter on.

A few weeks ago, I was stuck on a freeway. Completely stopped. After about 10
minutes of no motion I really wished I had been able to do a "search within
1/2 mile of my location" sort of thing to find out what was going on and when
it would likely be fixed, so I could decide to tell the friends I was meeting
"I'll be a bit late" or "Sorry, guys, go on without me".

~~~
tetrep
>There are times when geographic locality is the thing you want to filter on.

Which has nothing to do with actually being near said locality. I think
filtering on geographic locations is great, but even greater is that ability
to do so while remote. I can learn about events occurring in and around a
specific area without actually being in that area. That's (part of) the beauty
of the internet.

~~~
ianferrel
I disagree that it has _nothing_ to do with it.

I'm _way_ more likely to be interested in stuff happening near where I
currently am than in some other arbitrary place.

Sure, sometimes it makes sense to be able to search elsewhere, but that makes
things more complicated for marginal gains.

Yelp is a good example. Yes, I've used it to research food in other locations,
but it would still be 95% as useful to me if the only thing it did was show me
stuff that was nearby, since that's what I almost always use it for.

------
bjackman
This page is totally devoid of content. If it wasn't for the comments in here,
I would have absolutely no idea what it's advertising; I would have closed it
and forgot about it forever.

It does seem like a cool idea though.

------
bsg75
Deleted within 5 minutes.

There was no news, no actual information. Only a series of random pictures,
screenshots of other apps, and vague comments about whatever what on the
poster's mind.

Social news will always have a near zero signal to noise ratio.

------
dilap
I love Plague.

For me, it's like the spiritual, mobile successor to mainpage reddit, i.e., a
nice casual way to consume & share neat photos, links, and interesting "what
if...?" questions.

So far at least, the community has been very positive, and not overrun with
9gag-style inanity.

An interesting aspect of the dissemination scheme is that even popular cards
will only spread to, say, 100 to 1000 people. This keeps the conversations on
the cards small enough to still be intimate.

------
oracardo
Description on the app store is better than the website imo
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.plague](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.plague)

"Plague is an essentially different way to spread information. The idea for
Plague is to create a perfect medium for spreading information as wide as it
deserves to be spread, without any boundaries. Plague works like a virus. When
you spread information, it goes to the users who are closest to you
physically. The infected users can spread information exponentially further or
they can resist the epidemic by keeping the information to themselves.
Everyone has a fair and equal chance to be heard by the whole network right
from the start - there is no friending or following on Plague. If your
information is interesting to people, it can eventually spread to the entire
world."

------
rymohr
I don't care to see pictures of cats but I do want to be notified of major
local events. Allow me to filter out posts that haven't already been spread by
X users and you're onto something major here.

------
joshu
It is a bit of a cross between tinder (swipe to amplify/dampen) and images
(photos are the social object)

~~~
Khao
Why can't the website tell what it actually does? It's honestly a terrible
landing page for an app.

~~~
reledi
It's probably their strategy. Being (intentionally) vague raises curiosity.
The best way to find out what it does is to download the app.

------
runn1ng
It's interesting how addictive it is, at one hand, and how fast it becomes
boring on the other.

After one hour of seeing "motivational quotes" and "funny pictures" I about
had enough.

------
jbinto
My feedback:

I just tried it in Toronto and had to swipe down about 50 times to get rid of
obvious (and NSFW) spam.

The content is better now, but all coming from the eastern USA.

I tried to comment on something, and got prompted to register. But after I
registered, I lost the card I was going to comment on, and there appears to be
no way to go back to a previous card.

The geolocation is a little wonky ("Nueva York, Estados Unidos").

~~~
personZ
I tried in the Halton area (West of Toronto) and had about 40 things from a
single individual in Hamilton who continually posted far right conspiracy type
things. I suppose this is the issue with the network effect -- right now it
looks pretty pathetic in this area.

But the idea is solid. The Internet went global, but really a lot of the
activity now is making it local again.

------
07a
The website doesn't do a good job of explaining what it is. Essentially, you
are provided with a list of 'infections' which are just funny photos or
messages. You can choose to either 'stop' the infection from spreading further
or 'infect' other people, propagating the message to new people whom you can
geographically reach but the previous propagators could not.

It seems like the range can get pretty large. I live in the middle of nowhere.
My first few images were from maybe ~5 miles away, but after using it for a
bit I'm getting messages from 40-100 miles away.

You don't need an account, but it gives an option to create an account to
"track" your infections as they spread.

------
dredmorbius
_Forward to Marketing:_

A few bits I've noticed over 25+ years in the industry in assessing technology
product and service offerings: hardware, software, SAAS, PAAS, and more.

⚫ Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it,
what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an
interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool? As a
reader notes, _don 't make me use Wikipedia to figure out WTF your company
does._

...

[http://redd.it/27d5xr](http://redd.it/27d5xr)

(Previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489870))

~~~
peteretep
I suspect the story would have had less traction here if it was obvious what
the app did

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, marketing fail.

Epidemic information distribution was the center piece of the paper "Epidemic
information dissemination in distributed systems" and highlighted in
Gossip[1].

Marketing words that have a better connotation for this might be 'discovery'
or 'enlightment' or 'intuition', even 'gossip', even though it is often a
scourge in middle school, has a better reception than 'plague'.

[1]
[http://phdopen.mimuw.edu.pl/lato08/notes-1.pdf](http://phdopen.mimuw.edu.pl/lato08/notes-1.pdf)

------
BronSteeDiam
“I am unclear on pretty much every aspect of this”

“don't know if I'm going to need to sign up”

“benefit to me seems dubious”

“what this things actually do?”

“This page is totally devoid of content”

“If it wasn't for the comments… I would have closed it and forgot about it
forever”

“Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it,
what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an
interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool? As a
reader notes, don't make me use Wikipedia to figure out WTF your company does”

1) Lower your bar for trying new things

2) Don’t be so cynical and quick to judge.

“The best way to find out what it does is to download the app.”

~~~
imron
Considering the amount of malware, spyware, marketing-ware, grab-all-your-
phone-contacts-and-upload-them-to-our-server-ware on the marketplace these
days, my bar is quite high and I'm happy for it to remain so.

For a new product/app, the onus is on the company creating it to explain why I
would want/need their product. I'm not going to go around installing random
things on my phone just to 'find out what it does'. I want at least some idea
of what the app does before installing.

No compelling use-case? No download.

~~~
BronSteeDiam
I would rather install an app, to see what permissions it needs, before
assuming it needs anything. If an app does nothing without me logging in or
giving them my contacts, then it probably does nothing.

There are many good reasons to be a late adopter, safety is one. I don't think
they should optimize their landing page for late adopters.

Judging from the site I thought Plague would be a new take on Reddit. Where
Reddit asks if you like or dislike a Meme (we need a new word). Plague asks if
you want to slow down or speed up its spread. This difference should mean
different content is surfaced.

~~~
imron
No, but they should definitely optimise their landing page for first adopters,
with the number one rule being tell people what your product does.

Late adopters will probably already know about the product before downloading
it. It's the first adopters you need to provide the description for.

------
nilkn
I'm trying it right now on Android and I think the up/down swipe gestures are
too sensitive. I have to be super careful with my finger on the screen to
avoid accidentally swiping a card the wrong way.

Other than that, it's an interesting idea. For those who are unclear on how
this actually works, it presents cards with information on them that others
nearby you have posted (photos, etc.). You can swipe up to "infect" nearby
people (send the card to them) or swipe down to do nothing. Also, I didn't
have to sign up or create an account to start swiping.

------
glesica
Something like this that didn't use the Internet would be cool. Like if it
used some kind of Bluetooth and would "sync" certain topics. Kind of like
Bitcoin meets Usenet but using a mesh network.

~~~
bwian232
so ... street pass on 3DS

~~~
glesica
Woah! That's neat!

------
0x0
It's slightly worrying that looking at a post I made via "my profile" shows a
map with "Infection started here" pinpointed to my exact house, but when I
click "Show post" it shows the same map with the marker offset somewhat. Is
the post tagged with exact geolocation and merely randomly offset by the
client in its "show post" mode? Why else would it should an exact location on
my profile but a distorted location on "show post"?

------
bbcbasic
I have used it for a few days. Here is my account:

==== The mechanics ====

Basically you share cards with short messages, pictures and videos. When you
post a card you infect a few people who are closest to you.

Then those people see it as a card, and decide whether to swipe up to infect
more people close to them, or swipe down to ignore.

If you make something popular and people tend to swipe up 25% or more of the
time, it slowly will spread across the world.

I live in Sydney, so with a faily dense userbase here, the first infections
are in the same city. However if you live somewhere without any users nearby
the infections will go further geographically to find the nearest 4 or so
people.

The more success you have with infecting people, the more your infection index
goes up, and so the more people you infect when you post or swipe up.

In addition there are comments on cards. If you make a comment you get
subscribed to the card and altered on further comments. You can unsubscribe
from a card when this gets annoying.

==== Expect to see ====

► Memes copied from other sites. This leads to popular cards complaining about
this, and saying to not upswipe memes.

► More memes.

► Even more memes.

► Inspirational quotes, mostly cliche but sometimes something new.

► Pet cats, dogs as expected.

► Pretty women, boobs, etc.

► Holiday photos.

► A small amount of politics.

► Screenshot of a plague card, which someone else takes a screenshot of so you
get a recursion. Those are really boring now!

► More Memes.

► Vary rarely inappropriate things - NSFW, porn, hatred etc. The system seems
good at self policing that kind of rubbish.

==== What is it for ====

In my opinion it is for mindless entertainment. The same way you may hang out
on Facebook for an hour because you are bored. This fills a boredom hole and
can get addictive, especially with the gamification of rewards (higher
infection ability) for creating new messages and getting to argue with
strangers about pointless stuff.

For this reason alone I decided to uninstall.

------
pizzashark
This is kind of reinventing the wheel. If I want to hear things from people in
my area, why can't I just walk outside and talk to them instead of using this
app?

~~~
fizzbatter
Such an odd response. How many people are waiting on your doorstep to inform
you of information in your local area?

I don't think this app does information sharing any better than, say, twitter
_(far worse, imo)_ \- but i find your response puzzling.

Since your issue is not of the quality of content (signal/noise), and instead
that of locality.. that you believe you can just walk out of your door and get
the same information this app provides - I ask you, can you? Can you walk out
your door, and receive similar info to that of this app?

The range on the internet far exceeds most peoples doorstep. Mine for sure, at
least.

------
TheHypnotist
So far my plague experience has been random photos of random locations, text
quotes of famous people, and text quotes of users. So basically, a lot like
Instagram. Neat concept, but I'd rather it be pictures of something exciting
down the street that I may pass forward to others in the area and if it's
exciting enough, even further. Not reposts just to gain points for how far
your post reached.

------
rwfilice
You shouldn't have to login to create a new item.

------
Houshalter
I'm confused what it is even after reading the comments. It's some kind of
image sharing thing? Why is this at the top of HN?

------
tjbiddle
Seemed interesting; however I uninstalled after a few minutes of use. I think
the idea certainly has potential - but the people around me just seem to treat
it as a status update or Instagram post.

This would be a great technology to spread important information but I don't
know how you'd filter that without defeating the purpose of "infecting"
people.

------
tomelders
An information dissemination tool created by a company called "Deep Sea
Marketing"? Colour me cynical, but nope.

------
elwell
99 Notifications on the app icon badge; made me uninstall.

Also, would be nice to be able to go back to a post I accidentally swiped.

------
stephenhess
I really like this. Simple mechanic and has that intimate feel that you get
from snapchat but with people nearby. They clearly need some love from a real
designer tho.. that logo / loading thing looks like something you'd stomp to
death if you ever ran into it.

------
Velox
What is the definition of "nearby users" in this context? It seems like
someone can start something in Seattle for example, and then only 1 other
person has seen it, but they are in France?

~~~
dilap
They've been tweaking the algorithm as they go along. Initially it was highly
local centric, now it appears to bias towards nearby but with a lower
probability chance of jumping further away. (Source: Early user, and some
comments from the CEO on Plague cards asking the same question.)

------
darkstar999
I couldn't figure out where the post came from. That should be easy.

------
themoonbus
They do need to make it more clear what the word "information" means in the
context of the app... It's such a broad word.

------
tronium
I highly recommend this. I've been a heavy user for two weeks, and it's been
working fantastic, I don't regret it.

------
ThinkBeat
This has advertising and spam written all over it.

How nice just as you pass Benny Giraffe store:

"Today 50% off healthy biscuits for Giraffes."

------
digitalpacman
This medium only works for localized information. There's no reason to use it
for anything that's not.

------
call
Opened the app and was immediately met with ~10 posts from a local leather
daddy. It was incredibly endearing.

------
ForFreedom
Tried this... You could equate this to Jelly, Foursquare. But seriously there
is not much use of it.

------
bbcbasic
It is a lot of fun. Glad to see some infections already down here in Sydney.

It could get very addictive.

~~~
bbcbasic
Two requests:

1\. Please make the videos not auto-play! Embarrassing at work. 2\. Please
properly set the audio source in Android, so that when I adjust the volume it
isn't the ringer volume but the app volume.

------
cstross
It looks to me like someone just reinvented RFC 977 (or maybe 3977) as an app
...

------
DonaldDerek
Plague Inc. of real data! Cool!

~~~
Artemis2
Hopefully Madagascar can get some news with this!

------
stockkid
I believe there is a game with a similar name and concept: Plague Inc.

------
jackau
Amazing idea!!

