Building RealBonds solo : Social Map to help people actually meet up in real life

Hey Product Hunt community 👋

I'm launching RealBonds in about 2 days and wanted to share the story and get some early feedback before it goes live.

The idea came from a personal frustration: while traveling, I found it surprisingly hard to meet people in a new city. Social media was supposed to help with exactly this, but in practice it's made people, especially women, close themselves off, since getting DMs from strangers online feels more like unwanted attention than genuine connection. I wanted to build something that brings social media back to its original purpose: actually helping people socialize, not avoid it.

RealBonds is a live social map where you can:

• See nearby users and popular spots in real time

• Discover or host events (concerts, parties, small meetups) with visibility you control by distance and duration

• Explore venues that level up purely from real, verified on-site visits, not paid placement

• See your friends as a personal constellation instead of a flat list

• Send a friend request to someone at the same venue with one live, unfiltered photo — no catfishing, no gallery uploads

I'm a solo founder (final-year EE engineering student, self-taught mobile dev) — built the backend, both iOS and Android apps, and all the store design myself over the past two years.

Would love to hear: what would make you actually trust and use a location-based social app? What's stopped you from using similar apps in the past? Any and all feedback welcome before launch! 🙏