Tiki

Tiki is an anonymous​ chat with a beautiful design. Check out the onboarding, it's quite nice. @jshrager what are the use cases when you would use Tiki?

Excellent feedback Ryan. We need to convey to users the purpose of the product with as much clarity as possible - either during the on-boarding process by showing a collection of screens to illustrate the various use cases described by James or with our branding of the product. We will take this away as food for thought as we continue our journey. Regarding your second comment, in our opinion, the Snapchat generation, or Millenials if we will stretch the definition to this community, is the demographic where noncommittal transient connections occur most often - such as the exchange of usernames within Snapchat. By developing a platform where they can exchange information easily with no investment in the case of divulging personal details - then the use cases are multiplied and varied. For example, a girl meets a guy at a concert - by lubricating the social connection with a quick scan of a tiki that both will find memorable (Tiki of IMAGINE DRAGONS) rather than the awkward question of ‘Can I have your number?' - they are more likely to start engaging in a chat with one another. This makes the chats mostly disposable, and Tiki becomes a ‘limbo’, a space where each user feels each other out on whether they feel they are ‘safe’ enough to move onto permanent networks such as Whatsapp and Facebook, and the various risks that this entails. See the research conducted by Intercede: "70% [of Millenials] believe risk to their online privacy will increase as we become more digitally connected" and also “Millennials understand their personal information is a form of currency they need to part with to access online services. Yet they participate in this ‘digital trade-off’ in the belief that more can be done to protect their privacy. Millennials want more control over who should be able to access their information”. Supports the claim that by using Tiki, ‘more’ is done and this digital trade-off is carried out within our platform before moving on to less controlled forms of communication. Also, by including the novelty element, where there is an expiry on the conversation (the snapchat element of transient photos), then we would hope to observe an increase in the number of connections made across an open ecosystem where there is not a high level of implied trust among the two users. See larger cities where there is a concentrated number of people from a diverse background such as London, is where we will likely see the most engagement. Overall, you are right - we need to clarify the use cases so it is as clear as can be.

Sounds like a great idea. I see teenagers loving the idea. The challenge is spreading it. No reason to give someone who already has your number your Tiki and you need critical mass for an app like this to work. Im not sure how you get there but I see that as the challenge. It is only so often someone is asking or getting asked for their number by someone who they feel they would need to put in a limbo of sorts. Companies on the other hand, I could see people wanting to interact with companies anonymously.

The look and feel is fantastic—excellent job. That said, without your answer to Nikita's question I wouldn't understand the purpose of the product (even after downloading and confirming my phone number). I also have trust issues giving my number to an app that promises me privacy and anonymity, especially when there's little explanation for why it's needed. I guess the user inviting me might explain Tiki to me, but why not make it abundantly clear? What do you see as the expected Tiki use cases for "the Snapchat generation"?

The design is great.