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I run 300 forums, and I had a startup for them. The lofty goal of the startup was to "cure loneliness" but I never told the users that. My path to doing this w
by buro9 7y ago
I run 300 forums, and I had a startup for them. The lofty goal of the startup was to "cure loneliness" but I never told the users that.
My path to doing this was to encourage interest based communication, in a way that would allow them to take it offline. How? Well to make it interest + geography, i.e. horology nerds in Cumbria, cyclists in London, petrol heads in Cornwall, audiophiles in Suffolk.
By binding together an interest, and a geography, it naturally encourages trade, showing off, having a beer... and coming together. But not in a way that ever was to "cure loneliness" (which few people admit to feeling, and frankly most people find lonely people unattractive people from the perspective of wishing to hang out with someone like that).
By providing a space to share a passion, the forums brought people together.
I had to make our own software to achieve this, i.e. a forum with events built-in by default, etc. But it worked.
Except I couldn't get it funded beyond the crowd-funded angel round :shrug . But still, 250k monthly users, hundreds of marriages, tens of thousands of friendships, and still people meeting weekly for beer and chatting with others.
And like all love, when the lust is gone what remains is something special... these forums are evolving now, from the original interests, into just a group of friends for life.
If I were lonely today, I would say... identify a hobby or interest you could get into, start looking for entry things to dive in, and then look for groups on MeetUp, or forums online, that will help you find other people.
- ben_jones 7y agoI feel like it would be appropriate to share some of these forums in this thread, I think the immediate need outweighs anyone calling it out as self-promotion.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 7y agoIt's in his profile: https://www.lfgss.com/ https://www.lfgss.com/
- buro9 7y agoNot all of them are applicable, the platform has also been used for forums that connect old-age pensioners homes (it's easy to use), and support networks for victims of domestic sexual and violent abuse in South London. However the largest example is the London cyclist one https://www.lfgss.com https://www.lfgss.com . I started with cycling and the plan was to saturate one sport/recreational interest before branching out. So I run a lot of the cycle forums in the UK, from the Rapha one, through to Islington http://forum.islington.cc/ http://forum.islington.cc/ , Brixton https://forum.brixtoncycles.cc/ https://forum.brixtoncycles.cc/ tiny clubs like Grupetto https://csgrupetto.microco.sm/ https://csgrupetto.microco.sm/ One of the newest is a sustainability forum for a group with a core around Cambridge but spread over the UK https://onething.is/ https://onething.is/ Some of the forums are private, and I'm fine with that as they can permission it the way they want and pull members from elsewhere as they see fit, i.e. the petrolheads in Cornwall. Each forum is like a startup itself, they all have to find their first 10 users, then to get to 100 users, and to be aware of the 1% rule of internet culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) But I help nurture and guide, and show them how to do it. Without funding I've slowed everything down though. It's funded by donations from users across sites today, but expansion risks cost cliffs as I'm just below the threshold for a few services I would need to pay for (auth0 free tier) and don't have time to engineer my way out. With neither time or money spare, it's stagnated. But if someone wants a startup idea... this does work. Not wildly profitable, but it works. How did it make money? I'd barely scratched the surface, but conversation around interest contains a lot of intent to purchase, and there are classifieds and meetups. So it's affiliates, a challenge against eBay (people into an interest have emotional attachment to the items and would rather sell to others into the interest), and ticketing for events, etc. And because it's all a platform, one instance, the traditional highs costs associated with running a forum were avoided. Lower costs, and actual revenues :) I love what I do for work now, but I still believe this was an idea that is good for society.
- ben_jones 7y agoAny plans to open source / open core this software? I've always been interested in forum software (my first real web project was a Reddit clone in Flask and the complexities and edgecases abound - moderation tools, rate limiting, scaling write-load, finding the minimum front-end that doesn't make users puke).
- chrisco255 7y agoWhen I was an awkward teenager with no social skills, one of the places I found a social ingroup was on a video game forum on AOL. Roughly the same group of mostly teenage boys posted to this forum for 2-3 years before we all gradually moved off AOL. But we would later reconnect through Facebook and I still consider these guys good friends of mine even though I've maybe only met 2 of them in person.
- lolinder 7y agoThis is awesome. I've long felt a nostalgia for the close-knit forums I participated in as a kid. One was a worldwide group centered around an online game (CyberNations), the other was just a group of kids with similar interests in one metro area who met up occasionally. Both were vital for me in coping with feeling like I didn't fit in at all at school. It's great to see that that kind of close, friendly, personal Internet dynamic didn't completely die with Facebook's rise.
- claytoneast 7y agoI also played CyberNations as a kid and found social solace there. Did you ever play a similar game called LunarWars?
- lonelappde 7y agoFacebook has its sins but is this really one of them? Facebook supports small, controlled, geographically focused groups.
- lolinder 7y agoSupports maybe, but doesn't encourage or promote them. The money is in the endless news feed from your 300+ acquaintances, not in quiet, thoughtful conversation between a group of close friends.
- fragmede 7y agoOf course it can't promote them. All of the best groups are secret, and with good reason. They are spread via word of mouth which allows group admins to vet new users. Facebook even added a flow to support a "before you join, submit your answers these questions" workflow. Maybe that's not where the money is, but these private groups are so sticky that I don't currently see any alternative. People already know how to use Facebook, they don't know how to use Discord or Slack.
- greggman2 7y agoI found it's trivally easy to "unfollow" 280 of those 300+ acquaintances and suddenly my newsfeed isn't so bad
- garmaine 7y agoJust FYI, “have no close friend” and “loneliness” aren’t the same thing. I have no close friends, and I prefer it. Don’t try to “cure” people like me.
- dwaltrip 7y agoWhy do you prefer it?
- garmaine 7y agoI’m an introvert. People drain me. I find fulfillment in the world around me and my hobbies. I’m on HN not to be social but to learn things. I don’t need validation from others. I don’t hate human interaction either. I have friends. I just don’t NEED them, and don’t need to go seeking them or be especially close.
- lonelappde 7y agoI'm curious if you will retain this preference as you get older and physical frailty starts to appear in your life, or you lose your source of income.
- jliptzin 7y agoHas nothing to do with it. I am like him. People drain me whether I'm young or old, rich or poor.
- dwaltrip 7y agoThanks for sharing.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoI would say you're the biological anomaly. Humans are social creatures. Much or our society is defined by our achievements as a group then individually. I would say the op very accurately describes a general problem.
- NicoJuicy 7y agoIn Belgium, start cycling. There are groups everywhere, where a lot of friends meet.
- Insanity 7y agoAnd running groups as well!
- jacquesm 7y agoIs it still active? Pity you could not get funded but then again, good things rarely come in the guise of fundable businesses. Kudos for doing this.
- buro9 7y agoPlatform is still active, the 250k monthly uniques is the current number. But I haven't been able to do much other than keep it in maintenance mode for the last 4 years. I've let other forums be created and expanded it, but haven't had time to address it's flaws and improve it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- abledon 7y agolol, not sure if your intention was naming LFGSS to be eerily similar to the acronym "LFG" which means Looking For Group
- azdacha 7y agoThat's what I call success ; Thanks a lot