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Ask HN: Thoughts on Friend Making Apps?
I've been seeing an influx of friend making apps like 222, Timeleft, Real Roots, BE.IRL, and so many more. I do think that with the increasing use of social media, endless doomscrolling, and AI, human connection has been impacted adversely in the last decade.
Has anyone used these apps? What're your thoughts on them? Do you think the "loneliness epidemic" is really solvable by these types of apps or is there something larger at scale that needs to be done?
- al_borland 2mo agoIt seems with any app, there is an incentive to keep people on the app, which incentivizes selling hope, not an actual solution. This is the problem with pretty much all dating apps, and I can only assume they extend to friend apps as well.
- siddhibansal99 2mo agoCurious what you mean by "incentivizes selling hope"?
- al_borland 2mo agoTo keep people using the app, they need to believe (hope) that it will solve their problem, be it friends of dating. Every time a dating app leads to a marriage, they just lost 2 users. If a friend app leads to a friend group forming that no longer needs the app to get together, they could lose users at an even faster rate. The goal for these apps then becomes, how do we give people enough hope that they don't quit the app out of frustration and hopelessness, without making it good enough to lose them as a user from succeeding at the stated goal of the app. The marketing of Hinge played with this idea a bit, "the app designed to be deleted"... but of course, Hinge is now owned by The Match Group, who owns most of the dating apps, so it's not designed to be deleted, at least not anymore, it's designed to sell hope.
- Arya_xiaofan 2mo agoI completely agree, because the essence of capital is the pursuit of growth, and once "loneliness" is completely cured, this huge market will cease to exist.