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I made Beacon, a mobile app for answering: “which of my friends is free to talk right now?” It’s basically a one-to-many phone call that only one person can ans
by cjflog 3mo ago
I made Beacon, a mobile app for answering: “which of my friends is free to talk right now?”
It’s basically a one-to-many phone call that only one person can answer. Send a beacon to a group, and everyone gets rung at the same time. The first person who answers gets connected for a 1-1 call, and for everyone else the signal drops silently. No missed-calls or pressure to answer. Works pretty well given most people keep their phones on silent (and there are in-app settings for quiet hours too).
It works best if you're able to join with at least four people you don't speak with as much as you'd like. I have a couple dozen connections on the app now, and it feels like magic to me. Would love feedback from both introverts and extroverts who still like phone calls, or wish they had more of them:
iOS TestFlight access here -> https://trybeacon.chat/ https://trybeacon.chat/
Android also in beta here -> https://appdistribution.firebase.dev/i/afe3c44d8443c4c0 https://appdistribution.firebase.dev/i/afe3c44d8443c4c0
- aliayaz112 3mo agoSounds fun and idea is interesting
- cjflog 3mo agothanks, it is fun! I now spontaneously talk to friends 1-2 hours/week more than I did.
- Paarthmj 3mo agolove the idea, would love a messaging version
- cjflog 3mo agoCan you say more about what you mean by a messaging version?
- boaztheostrich 3mo agoOoh this is such a cool idea.
- telesilla 3mo agoI'd love it if you can also fix the problem of timezones. So many of my friends are oceans-apart and we rarely rarely meet and talk as a group anymore. Maybe some kind of asynchronous option?
- d1sxeyes 3mo agoYou can’t really have an asynchronous phone call though…
- telesilla 3mo agoRight, more asynchronous message leaving. But, that's Instagram.
- cjflog 3mo agoThe idea is to just send a beacon whenever you're free and maybe you'll catch friends in the wildly different timezones from time to time. I sometimes send beacons on morning commutes. Way too early for normal social calls but will sometimes catch people a few timezones east on a lunch break or something.
- gladlabs 3mo agowhat if I don't answer quickly enough but do want to talk :(
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- yreg 3mo agoYou fire off a new beacon.
- ggitelson 3mo agoVery interesting. Part of my says that if it rung and I wasn't the first to answer, I would feel bad. At the same time, I like the idea of being able to reach out and just say "I feel like talking to someone". I would imagine that it is super interesting for people with depression or addiction who could add their support group too.
- cjflog 3mo agoIf you miss a Beacon and that makes you realize you want to chat with a friend, you can just send your own Beacon!
- conrs 3mo agoThis is an interesting idea. I'm building https://tend2thrive.com https://tend2thrive.com - I could see an interesting collaboration here. Always looking for ways to re-engage your network without it feeling heavy.
- arthen23 3mo agothis is truly interesting. the question "I've met you, cool, I was waiting for you, and... now what?" is haunting me I believe it can help
- andrewrn 3mo agoSuper neat concept. One super low-lift way to improve its reception: change the styling of the landing page to not be blatant AI slop.
- jasondigitized 3mo agoCurious what the stack looks like. Are you doing all the heavy lifting yourself with WebRTC or using something like LiveKit?
- tim-projects 3mo agoThis makes me think of MSN,AOL or ICQ which had an online status and notification system. Why did that go away with modern messaging? WhatsApp and signal don't have it. Sms? Not sure. I think Facebook messenger does. I can remember this was an important feature that everyone actively used.
- cjflog 3mo agoI think it went away because everyone became "online" all the time, but that also meant most communication transitioned to async
- adrienfr31 3mo agoOn professional chat apps, you still have the option to set your status to online or offline. But there’s no "I just feel like chatting" option. Or else, that’s what the coffee machine is for.
- wind111 3mo agoWow, this is cool idea! it leads to building a relationship more!
- cjflog 3mo agoplease share if it works for you and any feedback you have!
- sejje 3mo agoI hope you're still checking comments: I had an idea for a way your app can really have some impact, maybe. In short, your app, but for an elderly grandmother. She gets lonely, but the burden of answering gets spread across the family. I think there's a real need for this. I'm pretty sure I read a write-up here by a guy who implemented something similar for his mother with dementia. She would call up incessantly.
- cjflog 3mo agoThis app could work as is for an elderly grandmother as once set up (could be set up for her by family), it's just "open app → press single giant Beacon button" which would try to reach everyone in her network at once. It doesn't really solve for incessant calling by folks with dementia...but could at least spread the load a bit. I think the dementia solution is occasionally, or often(!), routing the call to an AI-friend that has endless patience for repeated questions and circular conversations. But for a cognitively capable elderly person I think Beacon as-is actually solves for the use-case. The instigator has tons of free time and is searching for the family member who happens to be free right now.
- sejje 3mo agoI agree it could work as-is, I just don't think that market will find it very frequently.
- theapiartist 2mo agoThis is an interesting idea, the no missed calls or notification part is also very interesting, never thought something like that was possible.