

Ask HN: What's the best way to integrate a social layer to my app? - GeoffreyKr

Hi,<p>I&#x27;m willing to add a social layer to my app : Kwit, which help people to quit smoking with use of gamification and was wondering which model would be the best :
- forum
- chat
- question based (like stack overflow)
- rooms
- ?
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thaumaturgy
I think most people crave community and especially for something like kicking
a tenacious habit, some social support could be really helpful. Of those
options, probably a very simple forum would be best.

Chat is too dependent on having a critical mass of people online at the same
time. (For a niche site I visit occasionally, online-go.com, there are several
hundreds of thousands of users but it's not unusual to see only 30 or so in
the chat at any given moment, and of those, only two or three will be active.)

Q&A has to have some kind of purpose behind it. SO became a hub for
programmers and people in related fields who had to solve specific problems on
a regular basis, often the same problems over and over. It kind of suffers as
a community support thing and shines as a repository of knowledge.

"Rooms" are just a partitioning of your chat or forum, and probably shouldn't
happen before they become necessary.

But be prepared to spend a significant amount of effort on whatever social
layer you build. Whenever a bunch of people start to interact, there will be
differences of opinion and then disagreements, malicious people, well-meaning
but disruptive people -- handling all that can be a huge energy sink.

~~~
GeoffreyKr
Thanks for this complete answer, I must say that I agree with your points.
Have you some example of well-done forum on mobile apps ?

~~~
thaumaturgy
I don't, sorry.

Maybe you'll build a good one. :-)

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purans
Maybe a concept of badges that you unlock at various stages of your quitting
process might make it interesting and once user completes the process can
share that final stage!! So, in a nutshell, basic forum to post messages and a
way to get motivation for the user should work!

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qu1mby
How about a photo stream w/ comments where users post 'what I'm doing instead
of smoking'?

~~~
GeoffreyKr
That's a great idea ! Maybe a complement of the more "forum oriented" thread

