Beacon

Signal your availability and hang with friends

1 follower

Signal your availability and hang with friends

1 follower

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Launch tags:iOS•Tech

Launch Team

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Promoted

Reminds me of Free, Red/Green, Down To Lunch and so many more... that all failed. Why is Beacon different?

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9yr ago

Product Hunt

@juanbuis I was thinking the same thing. I find the online-to-offline space very interesting but every app that's built specifically for that use case (outside of dating apps like Tinder) never seem to take off. Instead, broader social apps like Snapchat, Houseparty, and Facebook indirectly and often serendipitously bring people together IRL. Curious to hear your thoughts, @ashleynh and @khanlou!

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9yr ago

Wi-Fi Login

@rrhoover @juanbuis @ashleynh @khanlou Yeah it reminded me of Ditto from 2011, too: https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/0...

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9yr ago

Castle

@rrhoover @juanbuis @ashleynh @khanlou I'm pretty sure this "cloning mentality of not solving any real problems and just having fun" has to do with well economics for these teams." Every single one of those co was a failure day 1, 0 retentions no real healthy engagement but didn't some of them exit? That kind of signaling where you can "fail" but exit for a few millions in months and have fun in this bubble is a motivation for a lot of people. Not even saying it's wrong but it is a very real conscious or unconscious reality especially the closer you are to cali.... Groupon aquired Ditto https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/1... Free app raised $1.9 million https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/1... Down To Lunch https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/1... Also press and "celebrity" for your own personal brand https://gigaom.com/2014/12/16/th... like gigaom hasn't covered any of our computer vision tech lol I get the motivations with these teams, lets do what has worked for other teams that hasn't solved issues but has raised money is fun to do and we can get lots of publicity. Data doesn't show that I'm wrong this is a trend that has been around for decades. I predict they will close their $2 million seed round in 8 months when their retention is at 85% and they are getting ready to go to 0 users.

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9yr ago

Milo

@rrhoover @juanbuis I have been looking at the online-to-offline space as well. In my opinion, what most apps got wrong (and many continue to get wrong) is a lack of significant online experience. It cannot just be a community generated meetup/events listing page. Specially when you are connecting with strangers and meeting them offline, you need a deeper online experience to decide if you want to actually join them or not. The chicken-and-egg problem is also a very significant one in location based apps and that isn't an easy one to crack too.

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9yr ago

@rrhoover I agree with you. I created an app called Tap a year and a half ago that was pretty much the same thing. But we quickly realized that the problem was not in the "planning". If anyone wants to chat more about the problem and what I figured out...hit me up. (btw, RIP Tap.)

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9yr ago

Knight TouchBar 2000

That's interesting. Why did you mentioned that you wrote the app and server in Swift on your product's front page?

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9yr ago

@akdm_ Because "[they] think in a few short years Swift is going to be the primary way iOS developers write their app backends, and [they] wanted to be at the forefront of this trend"

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9yr ago

Knight TouchBar 2000

@philipsajeesh Yeah got it, but why on the front page? I mean, this is not something that can be interesting for end users. See what I mean?

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9yr ago

Seed De Flicker

@akdm_ I think this app is intended for WWDC - therefore, the users are folks like me. And I care that it was written in swift. In fact, I've put similar blurbs on my swift backend projects, just because it makes me feel cool. 👊🏼

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9yr ago

Knight TouchBar 2000

@xcadaverx yeah, my bad, I didn't read the whole thing… 🙄

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9yr ago

@akdm_ @xcadaverx If you develop an Android app, has your backend then to be written with Kotlin? :D

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9yr ago

I get the idea if it's aimed at getting to know new people. But if it's aimed at your friends, why wouldn't you just fire up a group chat on whatever platform and ask if they would like to hang etc? Or who knows.. Actually call them?

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9yr ago

Meddler

Great concept, but why don't you use something like group messaging? (Actually working on something similar) Because people tend to be skeptical if it's user to user, and not like Meetup, which is user to 'organisation'

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9yr ago

Slotheroo

Would love to see the "filter by location" feature. Or just filter by current location by default. Love the UI and simplicity! Cheers

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9yr ago

Can you out tweet an AI?

The UI looks good but personally, I don't think it's a problem that hasn't been already solved. However, if there were added features such as automatic recommendations based on a group's preferences, that'll be neat.

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9yr ago

Delphi

Just like Downtyme. cc @iambarronroth @lukeasorenson

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9yr ago

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