4 ms·
something hinted at but not made explicit is the relentless filling of your calendar as you get older. it's simply harder than ever to get together with people
by zem 14y ago
something hinted at but not made explicit is the relentless filling of your calendar as you get older. it's simply harder than ever to get together with people on short notice, which is one of the major ways of nurturing nascent friendships.
- twoodfin 14y agoI agree, and I think there's an opening here for a social networking app. The way I've always imagined it, you and your friends would feed in your free time, activity preferences, which "friends" you actually enjoy spending time with... The back end would be something like a constraint solver combined with a recommendation engine. It would suggest events either independently or triggered by a user: "I'm feeling bored tonight. Does anyone I know want to do anything? Preferably within walking distance of my apartment." That triggers some notifications to check if there's any consensus for a get-together. The idea is that it's a lot of work and noise to spam all your friends whenever you've got a few free hours, especially since only a small subset of them are likely to be free on short notice. And planning any kind of outing can be a real headache when you have to either accomodate everyone's schedules/preferences or actively exclude them. You could even monetize it by sponsoring suggestions: "Three of your college friends are interested in getting Mexican tonight. Join them and get 10% off at José's. Want to go?"
- gcr 14y agoIgnoring the spam and the established conventions, that sounds just like the idea behind facebook's news feed when used on an account only connected to friends you like. You even pratctically verbatim quoted their sponsored targetted ads.
- zem 14y agowell, you could just use a mailing list. my local meetup group does that with great success.