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Show HN: A geofence-based social network app 6 years in development
My name is Adrian. I'm a Software Engineer and I spent 6 years developing a perimeter-based geofence-based social media app.
What it does:
- Allows you to load a custom perimeter anywhere on the geographic map (180° E and W longitude and 90° N and S latitude), to cover area any area of interest
- Chat rooms get loaded within the perimeter
- You can chat with people within the perimeter
I developed a mobile app that uses an advanced geofence-based networking system from 2013 to 2019. My goal was to connect users within polygon geofences anywhere in the world. The app is capable of loading millions of polygon geofences anywhere in the world.
https://enterpriseandroidfoundation.com/assets/images/other/manhattan-polygon-geofences.png https://enterpriseandroidfoundation.com/assets/images/other/...
But people didn't really have a need for this. So after failing, I spent the next 6 years trying new ideas to use FencedIn for. I tried a location-based video app and a place-based app that had multiple features. Nothing worked, but now I'm almost finished developing ChatLocal, an app that allows you to load a perimeter anywhere on the geographic map, which loads chat rooms.
The tech stack is 100% Java (low-level mostly). I have a backend, commons library and an Android app. Java was the natural choice back in 2013. However, I still wouldn't choose anything else today. Java is the best for long-term large-scale projects. (I'm also using WildFly. PostgreSQL and a Linux server.)
This app is still not fully finished, but I think the impact on society might be tremendous.
The previous app to ChatLocal, LocalVideo, is fully up on the Google Play store and can be tested. It has 88% of the features of ChatLocal, including especially the perimeter-based loading system.
The feedback I'm mostly looking for is new ideas and concepts to add to this location-based social media app. And how strong of a value proposition does the app have for society.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- rrr_oh_man 9mo agoWhy 6 years?
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoIt started with an idea to allow users to connect within polygon geofences anywhere on earth. Getting this system to work on Android with all the backend code takes a lot of time. The system itself loads polygon geofences 180° E and W longitude and 90° N and S latitude. And it uses perimeter-based loading system that crosses the antimeridian, equator and north and south poles.
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoI also built the entire user-based infrastructure from ground up in Java. That includes account settings, sign up, forgot and reset password, and verification codes with multiple settings. But the framework itself is still more complex, allowing for very stable long-term Android applications. It includes dynamic configurations parsed from the database on the backend and then used on the backend and Android app via the commons library. Dynamic user messages. A full commons REST framework with REST processing that's in the commons library. Overall it's a large system. And in fact, I'm getting close to publishing it so that users can build their own 100% Java full-stack Android applications: enterpriseandroidfoundation.com
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoRelative links that didn't get added in the comment: - LinkedIn story: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/scl/fi/trobts37gp4gr1qk9chxe/linkedin-profile.png?rlkey=uudob7avt6t18cgkr419yb68r&st=970qqide&dl=0 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/scl/fi/trobts37gp4gr1qk9ch... - LocalVideo: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.localvideo.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.localvideo...
- utopiah 9mo agoCheckout Hoplr.com that's a Web based equivalent.
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoOnly for neighborhoods. What if you want to connect with people in a park?
- BanAntiVaxxers 9mo agoThere's so many ways to fake your location data. There's one way that you can't really fake: Send them a secret code on a piece of paper in the US mail to their physical address. NextDoor used to do this at one point.
- baubino 9mo agoI worked on a location-based app a few years ago and this was the exact validation method we used (after having learned about it from using NextDoor). It’s incredibly slow and tedious though. We abandoned the app for other reasons but I always wondered how one could continued to manage this approach once network effects kick in and the app really starts to grow.
- patcon 9mo agoI think it's a neat service layer: and infra layer that attests to people's addresses -- to break it you need to intercept mail, which is a federal offence in most states. So it piggybacks on assurances of states, even while being nonstate. In an experimental identity system I prototyped as a civic tech project[1], I paired this with scraping a government "voter registration check" form and comparing against, and it was a two-fold guarantee: someone had to either submit false info to the voter registry or intercept mail. In theory it was very cheap to get very high assurances, for only the cost of a postcard API per user [1]: https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#about-this-fork https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#ab...
- lubujackson 9mo agoObviously not unhackable and often outdated as people move around, but I always thought phone number area codes were a quick and dirty way to establish or roughly segment people by location.
- chrisweekly 9mo agoMost people I know have kept whatever mobile phone number they happened to have when number portability was introduced in late 2003.
- MarsIronPI 9mo agoLet me start by saying that I really like this idea. Obviously social apps like this are faced with a chicken-and-egg dilemma of how to acquire users. I'm no marketer, so I don't have any suggestions on how to solve this one. For myself, I avoid non-free/open-source programs in general, but especially chat apps. I think that especially the programs we rely on to communicate should at least be transparent on the client-side. That being said, I would absolutely try this out if the app were released as FOSS (which it doesn't look like it is?).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pantalaimon 9mo agoReminds me of Jodel (https://jodel.com/ https://jodel.com/), an app originally focused on students. It lost quite some activity in the last decade though, gaining fewer users than it loses.
- user2722 9mo agoI can no longer install Jodel, says my device is not compatible (GrapheneOS on Pixel 9).
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoInteresting. I've never seen this app before. Ya, still not completely the same concept though. It's using proximity.
- shigawire 9mo agoJodel seemed to hurt itself badly with unskippable video ads, at least within the local community I am in that used to have a niche group of users. Similarly, in the US YikYak was also popular at colleges but killed itself by forcing user accounts instead of full anonymity.
- cyberax 9mo agoNo web version? No sale. WTF is wrong with these social apps!?!? Who wants to chat on a tiny screen when they have a computer available. Especially for local apps that function only when you're home.
- tclancy 9mo agoI mean, every phone has a camera built-in and you don't have to worry about drivers or anything like that.
- MarsIronPI 9mo agoI mean, every browser (worth supporting) can use the device's camera[0] and you don't have to worry about building for every OS or anything like that. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Media_Capture_and_Streams_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Media_Captu...
- tclancy 9mo agoI think you missed my point. That camera can be anything whereas a phone camera is going to work and no, most computers don’t have an always available camera. Other than that, touché.
- shigawire 9mo ago>WTF is wrong with these social apps!?!? Who wants to chat on a tiny screen when they have a computer available. Especially for local apps that function only when you're home. I agree with you personally... But at this point it is clear the answer is "everyone". The average consumer is not using a desktop for personal computing daily, just work.
- mvkel 9mo agoThis app (like any consumer social app) needs to first solve the cold start problem: make it useful for a single user, layer the social on top. Instagram had photo filters; Strava had activity stats. What could this have?
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoI'm not sure if the concept is really for a single user. It's more like you get to connect with people within geographically-defined perimeters.
- anotherpaul 9mo agoOne obvious feature would be to provide geo fenced Wikipedia or news feed. Like what is the highest rated/longest Wikipedia article in the area. Or maybe what's the 3 top radio stations and a link to them. There is plenty of local content that Google does not surface
- mvkel 9mo agoThese are great ideas!
- jcynix 9mo agoGeo fenced Wikipedia exists already, as a number of apps are available which offer regional maps with localized Wikipedia additions, see for example https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OsmAnd https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OsmAnd
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoI could do that. Have additional information about the area based on the perimeter.
- mvkel 9mo agoI am saying for it to succeed as multi-user, it needs to be useful first for a single user.
- wakeforce 9mo agoI had this exact same idea years ago, it's awesome to see someone else had the same idea, but actually had the guts to do it! Wishing you success!
- anotherpaul 9mo agoI don't quite understand: Instead of using the phones GPS to let me simply chat with people around me, which would be great during traveling or commute, I need to choose the place I chat at? This seems super counter productive in my opinion. It creates way more friction that I want. Maybe I want to save a location I have been to as a chatroom, sure but my primary interest would be to have my location determine the chat. So if I enter a university building: boom university chat. I enter Cern: boom Cern chat. The hard part would be to not just use rectangles but actually make the shapes meaningful. I don't want to walk past a high school or live next to one and then be included in that chat. So yeah. Tricky
- diggum 9mo agoVery cool. I developed something in a similar vein as a way to teach myself web programming 15 years ago or so. Https://dirtywalls.com is location-based message boards. You can create or join ones close to your location. Reminds me that I need to try to tell people about it since it’s mostly just me checking in to my local bars and shops.
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo agoNice. It's definitely a similar concept, just no geofences.
- kitd 9mo agoVery cool idea. My only worry is "Anonymous Mode". Anonymity IME usually results in conversations descending into vitriol, snark or libel.
- nprateem 9mo agoUnless you're a masochist you should prototype your idea and see what people want instead of building it first. Why add new features instead of trying to gain traction?
- g-b-r 9mo agoNot sure why you link to a screenshot of LinkedIn, or to LinkedIn at all, but you might want to spell-check what's written there
- deadcore 9mo agoGood idea - sort of remind me of YikYak. That was really fun & actually a great way to get local tips if you were new into an area with a good community. Towns it was dead, but if I was in a city that I'd never been to before, put a question out and you would get some real good insights. It faced a fair few controversies & got taken offline and not sure what became of it... Always wanted something with that... casual fence... to think of a better word again
- patrik_cihal 9mo agoOne pattern I’ve noticed with local / geofenced chat is that without a primary task (coordination, trade, alerts, etc.), chat becomes the product... and historically that converges to low-signal or toxicity. The tech here is impressive, but I’d worry the value needs to be anchored to a concrete job-to-be-done rather than chat itself.