6 ms·

How does it work? Bluetooth?

m-i-l 5mo ago
I'd imagine Friendster uses NFC. I developed a proof of concept of a tap-to-connect social network a couple of years ago which used NFC - on both phones you had to have the app open and press a button in the app to put it in both broadcast and receive mode, which seems like what is shown here. Some notes: - It had to be an app because the web NFC API[0] only allows a browser to act as an NFC reader rather than emulate an NFC card. Nothing stopping other functionality outside of the tap-to-connect working in a browser of course. - Permissions to act as an NFC card were fairly easy to set up on Android, but needed specific developer permissions for Apple[1], which had to be applied for[2][3]. Worth also noting that other proximity techniques such as QR scanning and geolocation are much more easily spoofed than NFC, making them much less useful as a proof-of-human validation. [0] https://w3c-cg.github.io/web-nfc/ https://w3c-cg.github.io/web-nfc/ [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/cardsession/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/cardsessio... [2] https://developer.apple.com/support/nfc-se-platform/ https://developer.apple.com/support/nfc-se-platform/ [3] https://developer.apple.com/support/hce-transactions-in-apps/ https://developer.apple.com/support/hce-transactions-in-apps...
- incompatible 5mo ago
  There's a comment below, "I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing." I suppose getting special "NFC card" permissions when they already struggled to get the app in the store would have been a bit much.
  - m-i-l 5mo ago
    Interesting. Android has a Nearby Connections API[0] which "uses a combination of Bluetooth, BLE, and Wi-Fi technologies" and appears to allow interoperability between Android and Apple devices, and Apple has a Nearby Interaction[1] which "use[s] the high-frequency capabilities of the UWB chip" but is restricted to Apple devices, so I guess it could be one of those rather than NFC. [0] https://developers.google.com/nearby/connections/overview https://developers.google.com/nearby/connections/overview [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/nearbyinteraction https://developer.apple.com/documentation/nearbyinteraction

m-i-l 5mo ago

I'd imagine Friendster uses NFC. I developed a proof of concept of a tap-to-connect social network a couple of years ago which used NFC - on both phones you had to have the app open and press a button in the app to put it in both broadcast and receive mode, which seems like what is shown here. Some notes: - It had to be an app because the web NFC API[0] only allows a browser to act as an NFC reader rather than emulate an NFC card. Nothing stopping other functionality outside of the tap-to-connect working in a browser of course. - Permissions to act as an NFC card were fairly easy to set up on Android, but needed specific developer permissions for Apple[1], which had to be applied for[2][3]. Worth also noting that other proximity techniques such as QR scanning and geolocation are much more easily spoofed than NFC, making them much less useful as a proof-of-human validation. [0] https://w3c-cg.github.io/web-nfc/ https://w3c-cg.github.io/web-nfc/ [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/cardsession/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/cardsessio... [2] https://developer.apple.com/support/nfc-se-platform/ https://developer.apple.com/support/nfc-se-platform/ [3] https://developer.apple.com/support/hce-transactions-in-apps/ https://developer.apple.com/support/hce-transactions-in-apps...

incompatible 5mo ago
There's a comment below, "I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing." I suppose getting special "NFC card" permissions when they already struggled to get the app in the store would have been a bit much.
- m-i-l 5mo ago
  Interesting. Android has a Nearby Connections API[0] which "uses a combination of Bluetooth, BLE, and Wi-Fi technologies" and appears to allow interoperability between Android and Apple devices, and Apple has a Nearby Interaction[1] which "use[s] the high-frequency capabilities of the UWB chip" but is restricted to Apple devices, so I guess it could be one of those rather than NFC. [0] https://developers.google.com/nearby/connections/overview https://developers.google.com/nearby/connections/overview [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/nearbyinteraction https://developer.apple.com/documentation/nearbyinteraction