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Growing small groups is an interesting idea. How will you match them? Although the faq says not on interests, you still need to decide who to put into which gro

Growing small groups is an interesting idea. How will you match them? Although the faq says not on interests, you still need to decide who to put into which group if there are too many people in an area, just random? If you just "fill groups" on after the other, you'd actually implicitly match on "early adopterness"

baron816 11y ago
When users sign up they enter their home address and pick an age group and a category (professional, creative, blue collar, none). It'll then search for a group within a half mile that matches all their two criteria (that isn't already full). If it doesn't find one, then it'll create a new one and the next person to sign up in the area with the same criteria will join. So it is essentially random, but so is everything. The kids you were friends with in school were just the ones who lived in your school district. Mature adults are mostly able to get along with anyone. Even if you don't like the people you're placed with at first, you do get to grow your group and meet more people. But some of my best friends are people I didn't really get along with at first. We became close because we spent a lot of time together. I influenced them and they influenced me. We discovered new common interests, and built a culture around it. I think having a group of friends can be a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are safeguards to remove people who really don't fit in, but I really hope that people will take the time and try to get along with those they're placed with. If it doesn't work, then implementing some sort of interest based system wouldn't be that hard.
- baron816 11y ago
  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the system will work as is. Adults who want to meet people and make friends are really easy to get along with. We needed interests to bind us together when we were young kids in school because we hadn't had any life experiences by that time. We had all essentially lived the same life up until we graduated college. But once you're an adult, you have so much more to talk about--so many stories to tell.

baron816 11y ago

When users sign up they enter their home address and pick an age group and a category (professional, creative, blue collar, none). It'll then search for a group within a half mile that matches all their two criteria (that isn't already full). If it doesn't find one, then it'll create a new one and the next person to sign up in the area with the same criteria will join. So it is essentially random, but so is everything. The kids you were friends with in school were just the ones who lived in your school district. Mature adults are mostly able to get along with anyone. Even if you don't like the people you're placed with at first, you do get to grow your group and meet more people. But some of my best friends are people I didn't really get along with at first. We became close because we spent a lot of time together. I influenced them and they influenced me. We discovered new common interests, and built a culture around it. I think having a group of friends can be a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are safeguards to remove people who really don't fit in, but I really hope that people will take the time and try to get along with those they're placed with. If it doesn't work, then implementing some sort of interest based system wouldn't be that hard.

baron816 11y ago
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the system will work as is. Adults who want to meet people and make friends are really easy to get along with. We needed interests to bind us together when we were young kids in school because we hadn't had any life experiences by that time. We had all essentially lived the same life up until we graduated college. But once you're an adult, you have so much more to talk about--so many stories to tell.