[HN Gopher] Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: What do you think of my new social app?
Hey there, First time posting on Hacker News in about 2 years! The
reason I'm posting is that I thought I'd write about the product
I've been building, in hopes it resonates with people. Why build
yet another social app? Because I deleted almost all social media
around 3/4 years ago as it was just net negative on my life. There
was very little that was truly interesting, I didn't care about
looking good to other people and because of the 'media' and ads,
the apps were all designed to make me spend too much time for what
I was getting. I hated it and what it meant for people's behaviour,
including mine and my friends. I also noticed that the vast
majority of my friends were pretty much passive on the services,
even if they had an account. Turns out that most people felt
uncomfortable sharing to people they didn't know too well, which
inevitably happens as you meet new people, add them, and often
don't develop the relationship much further. I had a sense that
there could be a better way. In that, I remembered the days of
Path and Google+ which had the model of focusing on particular
people in your network, both through the feed and in how you
shared. Path in particular was a 'real life' social network,
something that despite being brought to market in 2010 or whatever,
seemed to be more relevant today. So problem found, problem
solved. I took the journey of learning how to code when COVID hit
(I was working in Architecture and Design and was about to start my
masters degree at Harvard GSD in Boston), then one thing led to
another, my prototype garnered some investment interest, and
Circles was born. The idea is very much like the name suggests,
it's about adding your contacts (synced through your phonebook)
into Circles that define what the relationship is. This means that
you only see things from people you have tagged (rather than
everyone) and when you share, you choose exactly who it goes to
(rather than all your friends or followers). It also takes cues
from other privacy focused social products. Posts are encrypted,
reactions and comments are only shown to people who are contacts
with eachother, and user profiles only show that which has been
explicitly shared to the user viewing the profile. As they were
mentioned briefly before, it's essentially a crossover between Path
and Google+ with a wrap around layer of privacy, so the potential
revenue has to eventually come through paid features rather than
ads. We're in the app store and google play store (yay, cross-
platform JS frameworks), the invite code is 'FULLCIRCLE' and
download links are below: Landing: https://oncircles.com iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/circles-share-more-with-less/i...
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oncircles I
would love to hear your feedback and suggestions on the idea. Hit
or miss? PS: If you want to chat about the idea or are interested
in working together I'd love to chat. Always interesting to meet
people on HN and we have the funds, ideas and drive to continue
making cool things that can solve big problems. Send me an email at
james@oncircles.com Thanks!
Author : jstrafy
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-02-02 10:32 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oncircles.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oncircles.com)
| zaik wrote:
| Does this app integrate with existing standards for social
| networks like ActivityPub or XMPP?
| jstrafy wrote:
| It doesn't! Which services do you use that are built with these
| standards?
| zaik wrote:
| Mastodon and Movim.
| catfishx wrote:
| A new unknown app claiming its privacy friendly asking me for all
| my contacts with out being open-source and not even properly
| tested? No thanks.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Appreciate the comment. As mentioned in some comments we will
| continue to push the privacy front as far as possible, until
| then we've tried to be clear about communicating where we are
| with that (and clear about what we're not yet doing privacy
| wise).
|
| 1. The vast majority of our privacy is in product experience.
| Sharing with less people instead of everyone, making reactions
| and comments only visible between mutual contacts. 2. Names,
| Posts, comments and replies are encrypted at rest. 3. We sync
| your phonebook for contact discovery and don't store it on our
| servers. Therefore it is not linked to your identity. This is a
| hard problem to solve as Signal wrote in this blog post
| (https://signal.org/blog/contact-discovery/)
|
| That said, privacy is a super important issue and external
| testing and open-sourcing is something that we desire to do. So
| thanks for the checker here!
| 3np wrote:
| Just chiming in that until it's fully open-sourced (or at the
| very least source-available with a license allowing me to
| build, modify, and run it myself), this is entirely
| uninteresting as an alternative.
|
| We are many that had trust broken one too many times.
|
| IMO encryption/privacy means nothing if I can't ensure it's
| what it says myself. Ability to self-build is the only way to
| make that happen.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Definitely get where you're coming from here - have noted.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| The screenshots actually have the 2 things I thought about
| before:
|
| - circles from Google
|
| - combined pictures ( haven't seen this one and is a must!)
|
| I'm downloading.
|
| Edit 1: Required contacts ( Ugh). But - Say hello to @God ( God,
| i really hope i can change the handle later on) = No forbidden
| username list probably.
|
| Edit 2: Ugh. Invite only lol. Disallowed contacts & storage
| again.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Hey there - Thanks for this & nice handle (you can change it
| later)!
|
| The app is invite only but I've posted an invite code in the OP
| (FULLCIRCLE), also will remove the invite proxy in the
| onboarding in the next update. Hopefully you'll still try!
| designium wrote:
| The "Landing: " link is not working.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Strange, thanks for bumping this. It works with copy paste so I
| must have done something with the formatting.
| sgt wrote:
| What would be the major difference be between this and the
| Facebook functionality where you choose who you share with?
| jstrafy wrote:
| Great question. The major difference is that you need to add
| people to Circles to see from and share to them, the entire UX
| is focused on Circles.
|
| Often people don't use the list feature on Facebook because a
| core product assumption of Facebook is that everyone you add is
| your friend, and lists are not a priority in the Facebook
| experience. The Facebook sharing experience is also centred
| around engagement, where more numbers makes you look better. So
| users have the option of using lists on Facebook but there's
| little incentive placed there.
|
| Lists also don't have much impact what you see. This means on
| Facebook the vast, vast majority of content still comes from
| people you don't really care about and random content accounts
| from businesses and influencers. So secondarily, Circles feed
| is simply chronological and only contains direct content from
| people you have added to a circle.
| sgt wrote:
| You're brave taking on this task. Many have failed.. or
| messed up as they were succeeding.
|
| I recently stopped using Instagram because it was filling up
| with nonsense. Also they push features in your face that you
| don't really want to use. Facebook is also a sad story. But
| for some reason we keep returning. We're like little rats in
| an experiment, waiting for our next endorphin jolt.
| elwell wrote:
| Website design and intro video look nice.
| tallanvor wrote:
| Syncing contacts from my phone is a hard no even from established
| companies -- there's just way too much potential for abuse. An
| unknown individual wanting this screams scam.
|
| But let's assume for the moment that you aren't running a contact
| harvesting scam... I hardly use Facebook and I'm very particular
| about who I add on there. I actually go back and remove people I
| don't interact with or who create noise --I want to be able to
| log in once a week and see what people are doing, not scroll
| through memes or other crappy shared content.
|
| My contact list on my phone, on the other hand, has friends, ex-
| friends, family, current and former coworkers, etc. Most of them
| I don't want to be connected with on a social network.
|
| So I guess what I'm saying is that from my perspective, you
| aren't solving any problems, and are just a potential security
| risk when it comes to sucking up contact information.
| jstrafy wrote:
| I can understand the hesitation, it's something we'll consider
| changing back or making opt-in.
|
| Thanks for the grace there, and that's a problem we are
| solving. You might have X contacts on Circles but you're only
| going to see from those you have placed in a circle. So only
| content from people you actually want to see from.
|
| In terms of syncing contacts, we don't store any contact book
| information on our servers. We pass through the contact book to
| see if a user exists there, we return them back as a
| connection. If not we return them as someone you can invite.
| onion2k wrote:
| _We pass through the contact book to see if a user exists
| there, we return them back as a connection. If not we return
| them as someone you can invite._
|
| Do you log who someone has looked up in Circles when they
| join? If you do then you could trivially reconstruct
| someone's contact book.
|
| That's what Facebook were found to be doing, except they were
| actually creating 'shadow profiles' for the contacts.
| tallanvor wrote:
| > In terms of syncing contacts, we don't store any contact
| book information on our servers.
|
| But... Again, you expect me to trust you. And if I don't
| trust Facebook or other well-known contacts to use my
| contacts appropriately, why would I trust what appears to be
| two random individuals in the UK to not retain that
| information? Are we supposed to forget the lessons of the
| past with all of the apps that have used our data
| inappropriately?
| criddell wrote:
| I'm sure all the people in your contact list who don't want
| their information shared would be happy that you say no.
| Frankly, I'm always somewhat amazed that people do share that
| information. To me, it doesn't feel like that's mine to share.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Appreciate the comment! We do this to see if there is an
| existing user for a connection (like any chat app). We don't
| store the contact book on a server nor process anything other
| than that.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| If I'm understanding this correctly, it's possible for someone to
| try to share something with me, but I will not see it because I
| don't have them tagged? It seems the bidirectional graph means
| very little will end up getting shared. And if there is little
| content, why would it need to be behind a walled garden?
|
| And also, how does this solve the problem of people being fake
| and posing on social media?
| jstrafy wrote:
| Yes. Well that's true if there is little content shared and you
| are considering it from the perspective of your whole friends
| list. Generally people are selecting who they want to share to,
| and sharing things they otherwise wouldn't because there is a
| heightened level of comfort with their audience. Would love you
| to give it a try and tell me the same thing after a few friends
| are on there!
|
| If you mean it stops people using social media, it doesn't. But
| if you're talking about how people thus far have shared content
| on the app, they share much more authentically because they are
| sharing to a small group of people who they have personally
| selected. It's also outside of the spaces where they normally
| post more pristine things, which helps.
| chekibreki wrote:
| How exactly is post encryption implemented? How do viewers
| decrypt the content (key management)? Where is it decrypted? In
| the browser? Server-side?
|
| In the end for me the question is: How can I trust you to not
| leak my private posts? Why should I not continue using Signal
| groups? I realize that I'm probably not your main target group.
| jph wrote:
| Great work! Congratulations on launching. Here's feedback.
|
| I don't want to sync all my phone contacts because many are
| confidential; do you provide a workaround?
|
| I loved the circles concept on Google+, but many people said
| circles were too much overhead to create and maintain; how will
| your app be better?
|
| Your landing page and video emphasize one person's personal
| connections, whereas Instagram and similar social networks are
| seeing major usage in B2C accounts; what can you say about your
| ideas for this kind of usage?
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks! Love the feedback.
|
| Good point and something we haven't experienced before. There
| definitely needs to be a workaround. We had manual search and
| add in a previous version so
|
| The answer here is UX. Google+ UX was clunky at best, where
| their circles feature was essentially just an add on to the
| Facebook experience (which facebook then replicated through
| lists). On Circles, the whole app runs through Circles and
| we've focused the app entirely on the benefit of adding people
| to Circles and creating more intimate connections with people.
|
| Great point. I think for influencer, B2C type accounts, for now
| people should definitely continue to use Instagram as its not
| something we're entertaining for now. However, the way WeChat
| (I lived in China for a while) splits personal and business
| connection is fantastic and something I think about a lot.
|
| In time we'd love to explore the route of a hybrid
| interoperable chat (beeper.com and texts.com) and social app,
| where B2C accounts are relegated to a more minor part of the
| experience (90% real life connection, 10% other). This works
| amazingly in WeChat because the little communication they have
| incentivises B2C accounts to communicate with signal and also
| makes WeChat monetise beyond advertisements.
| tymm wrote:
| I tried to sign up on my iPhone and it didn't work.
|
| I think this is a great idea. What are your strategies to make
| users to bring their friends?
| jstrafy wrote:
| Sorry about that! At which point did it stop working?
|
| Most bug feedback I've gotten since going live has been at the
| verification page for your phone number. If this is the case,
| the solution has been to go back a page and submit your number
| again - happy to support here over email if you'd like!
|
| Our strategy revolves around the intimacy of the sharing that
| the app has created so far. Despite being simple (and buggy it
| seems!), you really only need 2-3 family/close friends to make
| the app joyful - successful or not we've aimed set up the app
| so that you get that experience as soon as possible.
|
| An (non mom-test) example here is in how it improved my close
| relationships. My aunt passed away from cancer a few months
| ago, but before that we were able to share moments on Circles
| that otherwise would have not made it into chat and/or the
| typical social apps. Beyond holding the experience dearly, the
| possibilities of intimate sharing outside of typical social
| media made her invite her friends.
|
| We can of course bake a bunch of viral marketing features into
| the product (and have started doing so) but getting this single
| thing right is by far top of the list.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Great work on the app! I haven't used it yet, as I'm reluctant to
| download an app or even sign up for an app without a clear demo
| of how it works. The video on the landing page explains the
| principles of the app (circles, privacy, etc) but it doesn't show
| how it works in practice.
|
| As someone who also abhors social media, how is this different
| from those experiences? How are the circles managed? How are my
| posts and feed managed?
|
| I used Google+ back in the day, and the circles concept was
| introduced with that. The circles were somewhat tedious to
| maintain, and became difficult at scale. How is this easier or
| better than that?
|
| Also, without a web option, it's a no go for me for a social
| media app.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks for all these comments, all noted. You're right, a demo
| would be nice and also super simple to do.
|
| Also a great point, as mentioned in the OP, I've been off
| social media for some time because I hated them. So bar the
| standard stuff of onboarding, posting a piece of content etc.
| We've pushed to do the exact opposite of a normal social media
| app. Some examples:
|
| - You must add someone to a Circle to see them in your feed,
| and share to them. - Reactions and comments are only shown
| between mutual contacts. So if you're viewing a post - Names
| and Posts are encrypted at rest, and we don't ask/take any data
| we don't need. We want to push this further in time but our
| intent is that we actively eschew collecting specific data
| about individuals, so don't have incentive to make the app
| driven by ads/addictive features.
|
| Google+ was interesting but ultimately was just Facebook with
| more friction (eg. connect with as many things and people as
| possible). We're using the Circles concept to target the inner
| parts of your network, rather than everyone. Still a WIP,
| though!
|
| Also good feedback, we focused on mobile because of limited
| resource but a web option would be great. Is there a specific
| reason it's a no go for social apps?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I avoid downloading apps in general, but in particular social
| media apps because they make use of many dark UX patterns
| (notifications, location/data access requests, etc). I'd
| rather avoid altogether. So I browse reddit, twitter,
| facebook, instagram, etc from mobile web when I do use them.
| Your app may promise not to have or add those patterns, but I
| still won't use it if I don't have it as a fallback. I also
| spend a great deal of time on my laptop and need the option
| to use a desktop app or website in order to interact with a
| social media service.
| jstrafy wrote:
| All noted. Thanks!
| danjac wrote:
| Honestly if you have limited resources wouldn't a web app/PWA
| be a better option to give you faster turnaround on bug fixes
| and features, and a wider platform reach?
|
| Personally I'm quite conservative about installing apps due
| to concerns about security, battery usage etc - the only
| social media apps I have on my phone are WhatsApp for family
| stuff and Twitter for casual scrolling. I'm happy to just
| jump into a web app and try it out though.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Yes, in hindsight this is in my mind! First time founder
| and Circles was the first piece product/code that I wrote
| on my own accord, evolved quite a lot but still some
| decisions I would make again.
|
| Web-app seems to be the consensus here so will definitely
| keep that in mind. Thanks for the feedback!
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Great work on the app! I haven 't used it yet_
|
| These two statements don't go with one another.
| sid-ant wrote:
| Doesn't it seem like too much of a work? Just as you were using
| Hacker News, most people I know use a social network, passively.
| That is, there are only a few people who post regularly while
| others just react to it.
|
| Also I think WA / Telegram groups basically replaced what Path /
| Google+ / FB Lists set out to do. It's just more convenient.
|
| Right now Instagram does all of what I would want from a "public"
| social network while I have whatsapp groups for close friends.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! It depends on the context, I think for
| most it is too much work but we're not focused on building a
| tool for everyone right now (on that I wish we could be more
| targeted in our marketing).
|
| True most networks are passive, and the public networks are
| catering for this. I would also agree that the chat apps is a
| great solution for close connections and often use this as
| their primary social network for this reason.
|
| From experience, because chat is a linear thread, conversation
| focused and notification heavy, it's really not good for
| sharing things that don't directly concern the person/group
| you're talking to.
|
| So Circles is all about creating a space for sharing your life
| with those who matter most, sharing things that you don't
| necessarily _need_ to share but would like to away from the
| spotlight of social media. For example I 've been sharing my
| travels in Portugal to my close friends and family circles
| (around 20 people who are mainly not interconnected). If I did
| this on chat I would be opening/maintaining 10+ conversations
| about myself! This is the problem we're solving currently.
|
| That said, overall I agree that there's an overlap there that
| takes away from the value we offer to people right now. Gotta
| start somewhere though!
| empty_banana wrote:
| Congrats! Tell us about your software stack
| jstrafy wrote:
| Super simple, I didn't know how to code 18 months ago so when
| we started (was just I at that point), I stared building with
| what I could.
|
| The front end is built with React Native (JS) as it provides a
| way for us to more or less maintain two OS with one codebase.
| It also is somewhat simple for us to convert out code for web
| with react-native-web. We do use a series of community build
| packages (more than I would like) but that's how its went for
| us early stage.
|
| The back end is built with Rails as a simple API layer, keeps
| it simple to make models and controllers and build lightly with
| the focus on the architecture. Phone verification integrated
| through Twilio and we use Lockbox for at-rest encryption.
|
| Hosted serverless on AWS EB (if going back I would stick to
| Heroku at least until this point and beyond).
|
| As an experiment we also were building on top of the Matrix
| protocol (https://matrix.org/) with their Ruby SDK, but the
| cons outweighed the benefits in the end. Would love to figure
| out a solution here, and love the idea of interoperability
| championed by products like beeper.com.
|
| Overall, I think that React/React Native and Rails is a good
| stack for hacking MVPs and would recommend.
| cvwright wrote:
| Aw man, sorry to hear that Matrix didn't work out for you.
| There's definitely a cost to building on an early-stage
| technology with a lot of its own complexity. (Heh, ask me how
| I know...)
|
| Still, super impressed at what you've built.
|
| Looking forward to syncing up soon!
| arcastroe wrote:
| Any plans on fediverse integration? It would be great if it could
| communicate with mastodon instances - and would fall in line with
| your privacy goals, but I'm not sure how feasible that would be.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
| f6v wrote:
| If Facebook and Instagram proved something it's that you either
| need dancing half-naked teenagers or conspiracy theories on your
| network to keep the engagement.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Ha. You've made a point there. Still waiting to be disproved in
| US/EU... Although WeChat is a great app and it's done insanely
| great (however they have added some weird TikTok like features
| recently).
| zack-m wrote:
| The idea is pretty cool! I think it has potential, as when I used
| instagram, people seemed to enjoy the "closed friends" feature,
| and also created separate IG accounts to follow close friends.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks! It's been interesting as I used the first prototype to
| learn how to code. There's been breaks between then and now but
| that was 18 months ago - a lot of the premises for building
| Circles have been adopted by IG. Close Friends, Send to Groups,
| DM focus and easy account switching.
| The-Bus wrote:
| Not to rain on your specific parade but I think enough "sharing"
| options have emerged (whether through regular chat, Discord,
| WhatsApp, Signal, let alone existing social networks) that I'm
| not sure what this is trying to solve. Looking at your first five
| features on the landing page:
|
| I already have a set of grouped contacts across different apps (
| Circles, Private Interactions) all with encryption (Encrypted
| Posts) and it's trivial to switch across apps to share anything,
| especially via the phone, which stores any media I'm sharing (
| The Vault).
|
| The friction from downloading a specific app then also getting
| all of my different contacts on that app so I can replicate
| functionality that already exists makes this seem like a non-
| starter for me.
|
| Is there some additional functionality or hook I'm missing? Not
| trying to be snarky, asking genuinely.
| stazz1 wrote:
| Just go try it out?
| djbusby wrote:
| How to try a social-sharing-network thing without the social-
| network?
|
| All that does is share content with nobody. To what? Practice
| pressing the share button in yet-another app? (I'm sure the
| workflow is common as the others)
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| I disagree here. I strongly believe there's a market for a
| better social media app, that messaging apps are not hitting.
| Why? messaging apps (chat, discord, WhatsApp, Signal) are not
| really social media - they're organized differently with
| communication at the center and content sharing on the edge (as
| opposed to Facebook, with content sharing at the center and
| communication on the edge).
|
| That edge v. center distinction dictates the use patterns, and
| social media is therefore used differently than a chat app.
| With a chat app, the social media aspect is drowned out by the
| sheer volume of communication, largely text based and not media
| based.
|
| But why is there a market? There is a growing movement to get
| away from Meta-based social media apps, because they're
| incredibly addictive and rob users of their attention / time.
| That being said, I still want to see what my friends are
| doing... but I'm sick of needing to choose between getting life
| updates from friends or having my brain back.
|
| Build me a platform that isn't Meta-based and isn't addictive
| and lets me share fun things with my friends and I'll gladly
| pay a monthly fee for it.
| f6v wrote:
| Telegram is very much about content sharing. News, hobby
| groups, paid adult content, crypto scams, memes - it has it
| all. Although primarily in Russian.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I guess it follows what I was thinking to do if I ever made my
| social app, it's also a way of socializing that is especially
| useful for people who often socialize via 'projects', so work or
| other things that they are doing, and the people they are doing
| stuff with are their friends, separated on a project basis
| generally.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks for the comment! Found that years of studying and
| working in Architecture and Design that I shared my work online
| maybe 2 times so it was that thinking that formed a lot of the
| architecture. If you share different things with different
| people, why not have the same mechanism online?
|
| I guess the question we're trying to answer now is whether we
| narrow in on creating a more intimate social network for
| regular use or create a type of social-email hybrid for this
| exact use case.
| severak_cz wrote:
| I also made an social network but I went other way around:
|
| 1) everything (except direct messages and internal realtime chat
| between our users) is visible and public
|
| 2) users are encouraged to use pseudonyms
|
| I also don't want to make product out of users, but currently
| there is no monetization scheme at all. It's currently semi-open
| beta for invited individuals (AKA you need to ask me for invite
| code).
|
| I started it when austrian social network Soup.io closed it
| doors. See https://kyselo.eu/ if anyone interested.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It'd be great if I could use these "circles" to limit who I
| create posts for on Facebook. Does Facebook allow that kind of
| API interaction? On their site they have a, "Pick Specific
| Friends" when you create a post, and being able to use circles to
| navigate that would be fun (saved groups?).
|
| Maybe you can solve that "network effects" problem by integrating
| somehow like that? I dunno.
|
| Congrats on launching, though! Always so hard to get something
| off the ground and ready for users, good work!
| jstrafy wrote:
| Great idea, annoyingly they don't have this type of API
| interaction! If so, would build a great client app that allows
| people to take the best parts of Facebook without the many
| negatives.
|
| Thanks!
| Temino wrote:
| Looks quite nice.
|
| But I did use Google+ and it was just no one else really using
| those features.
|
| So nope I'm not seeing the benefit of syncing my contacts with
| your service.
|
| WhatsApp won in our family for sharing.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| That's true, same with Facebook links and in some ways, close
| friends on Instagram. Our argument here is that rather than
| having it is as one-of-many features, we're focused on making a
| joyful experience around this single feature, creating a
| different space for sharing.
|
| Feedback noted though!
| anderspitman wrote:
| I'm a big fan of people trying to make new social networks, but
| personally I'm not interested in any new system not built on open
| protocols. Otherwise incentives are such that it's just going to
| turn into Facebook eventually.
| jstrafy wrote:
| I'm also very interested in open protocols, like Matrix and
| DeSo. However I disagree that everything has to turn into a
| media behemoth like Facebook. You make what you measure.
| anderspitman wrote:
| And one way or another you're going to end up measuring money
| eventually. Unless you are exceptionally altruistic, the only
| way to avoid selling out is to align incentives from the
| beginning. In practice this means forcing yourself to compete
| directly with alternative implementations, by building on
| open protocols. I'm not going to trust my time to your
| altruism.
| justshowpost wrote:
| browningstreet wrote:
| My close circle has settled on HalloApp, because we mostly want
| to share pictures of our adventures, kids and dogs. We don't
| really need/want to "chat" (I fully realize lots of people do).
| That said, we're all a bit of tired of trying out new social
| apps.
| jstrafy wrote:
| That's cool, I've never heard of HalloApp but just downloaded!
| Bar the chat function, how are you finding it?
| drcongo wrote:
| Small grammatical error on your home page: "Less connections,
| more connection." - should be "fewer" not "less".
| jstrafy wrote:
| Fixed and will be live once site refreshes.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I was wondering why that wasn't reading right to me...
| [deleted]
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks!
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Arguably I shouldn't even answer since I have no interest in a
| social app and would not try this no matter what it was, but
| there are some more specific issues related to the use of phone
| contacts.
|
| Understand that, to anyone who owns a home or is registered to
| vote, a phone is effectively useless. Very nearly every call I
| ever receive is a refi offer or vote canvassing or someone who
| wants to buy my house. The purpose of a contacts list is a way to
| allow me to know I'm receiving a call from a source I actually
| want, or need, to answer. But mostly this means businesses. The
| numbers are associated with an office, not a person.
|
| And, as another commenter noted, the numbers that are associated
| with persons are effectively anyone I ever had a relationship
| with and never deleted the number. That includes women I went on
| one date with 20 years ago, people who are now dead, neighbors
| who haven't been neighbors in decades. I don't have their consent
| to share that information with you.
|
| I understand it's a way to bootstrap a social graph without being
| able to export a friend's list from some other social app, but I
| would urge you to reconsider. For all of the other reasons I will
| never again use Facebook, at least one thing I think they got
| right was just showing you the friends list of existing friends
| who had opted into sharing that information with you. That was
| probably the best use I ever got out of it, since it allowed you
| to discover people you used to know and might want to reconnect
| with, but had never gotten or lost their contact info. It's much
| slower to require users to add friends one by one, but at least
| this requires a rough form of symmetrical consent.
|
| Phone numbers are not private. I have never changed mine.
| Effectively, everyone I have ever called and told my name to may
| have me as a contact, and any one of them could have listed the
| number somewhere else. That is obviously how I get on all of
| these constant contact or whatever they are call sheets. Someone
| scraped it from public property records and now I'm a contact for
| thousands of people I don't know. I would not ever want to allow
| those people to auto-add me to a social graph. It's just inviting
| yet another avenue for spam. Even if you don't directly inject
| ads into your service, there is nothing stopping your users from
| doing it. You're inviting companies like LuLaRoe to leech off of
| you if you ever grow successful enough.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Hey, thanks for the considered comment! Appreciate the thoughts
| here, and all are noted. We'll answer a lot of these concerns
| with next steps.
| androa wrote:
| Google+ had circles as well. I found it very hard to properly
| segment people properly. There are rarely such hard boundaries on
| relationships. If I'm snowboarding or barbecuing, it's very
| seldom I only wanna share that with just friends, just family, or
| just co-workers. It will usually be much more interest-based.
|
| Trying to create interested-based circles was also hard, as the
| cardinality explodes quite fast (and you're back to square one
| with not knowing who you share what with).
|
| I guess this is where Snapchat is onto something with giving a
| very rapid selection of who you want to share with. I usually
| have a small group of people in mind when I want to share
| something.
|
| Defining that group, fast, almost on a per share level is the key
| challenge.
|
| I think the "circles"-approach could be a way, but I think it
| must be much more dynamic and alive than how Google+ solved it.
| It must continuously evolve.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks, I get what you're saying here. Often times I find
| myself adding people to two circles or more. Although there is
| the option to create new circles I generally recommend keeping
| close to the existing circles that are created with each
| account.
|
| On that point we also offer a quick/simple mechanism for
| sharing to specific contacts. So you're able to share to
| circles and/or specific contacts.
|
| If you try the app, I would be keen to hear your feedback.
| Shoot me an email if that is the case.
| newswasboring wrote:
| > Google+ had circles as well. I found it very hard to properly
| segment people properly. There are rarely such hard boundaries
| on relationships. If I'm snowboarding or barbecuing, it's very
| seldom I only wanna share that with just friends, just family,
| or just co-workers. It will usually be much more interest-
| based.
|
| Couldn't you make circles of circles in google plus? I remember
| something like that, I had circles and then grouped them based
| on interest.
| cvwright wrote:
| Hey James,
|
| Congrats on launching!
|
| Great minds think alike. I also have a similar app (heh, also
| called "Circles") still in beta at
| https://testflight.apple.com/join/cwsJZed9
|
| There's also now MinesTRIX from a guy Henri Carnot in France.
| https://minestrix.henri2h.fr/
|
| Don't let the haters on HN get you down. (Although, hey, you're
| getting more traction here than I did. Go you!)
|
| But either way, the geeks are not the audience who are going to
| make or break these projects. I swear half the non-technical
| people I talk to are _very_ ready for something new. People on HN
| would be amazed at the hoops that "normies" are jumping through
| in order to avoid Facebook.
|
| PS - Henri and others (including myself) are working on a spec
| that would allow these apps to interoperate with each other,
| letting users on different apps communicate with each other just
| like with email or Matrix chat. It would be great to have you as
| part of that effort.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks, Charles!
|
| We actually had a call a few months ago, September I believe.
| I'm also in your Circles Matrix room!
|
| Haters are great, always good to have an opposite opinion and
| people feel strongly enough to write something (whether good or
| bad)!
|
| Agreed on that though, shoot me an email! You should also get
| speaking to Jackson (https://twitter.com/otherJackson) who's
| working on data standards for the web as a whole.
| jeswin wrote:
| Here's a skeptic's take on this:
|
| - People share privately in group chats. For example, in Whatsapp
| groups.
|
| - Circles were tried by Google, and got nowhere. One of the big
| lessons was that people don't want to organize friends into
| circles. In group chat (like in Whatsapp), one person
| creates/admins the group and all its members benefit. The
| grouping (chosen by one person, say "Tennis club") is more often
| than not equally relevent to all its members - sparing each
| member the burden of creating and maintaining circles
| individually.
|
| - If you're talking about encryption, you'll need to be clearer
| about it
| jstrafy wrote:
| Skeptic's take is always appreciated!
|
| - They do. There's definitely overlap there although because
| groups are often centred around a topic (school, work, hobby),
| it's generally not the place to share things that aren't
| directly concerning the group/people in the group. Eg. I want
| to a great building I've just visited, I'm generally not going
| to share it to the group chat for my class in my masters, but I
| would like certain people to see about it. Circles here are
| closer to a broadcast list.
|
| - Somewhat true, I think there are many points of failure in
| that case study. Our hypothesis is that by making a social
| network function entirely through circles, people will have a
| much more enriching and intimate experience. This has been
| proven true with current users, despite it not being for
| everyone.
|
| - Noted. Thanks for this.
| a_zaydak wrote:
| Congrats on the launch!
|
| How do you prevent this from turning into another FB? Is there a
| difference between using this and using FB where you have all of
| your posts / activity only viewable with your friends? I guess
| one obvious difference is FB's advertising and data mining. Are
| there any features that you absolutely will not add to Circles in
| the future because they will 'cross the line' into turning
| Circles into a FB clone?
| dewey wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I think the idea is great (Usually new social
| media networks have some good underlying idea) but how are you
| going to overcome the massive hurdle of getting people to join a
| new social media network?
|
| Many people says they "hate" social media, in reality everyone is
| still using it and it's very hard to even convince people (even
| close family) to use another messenger even though the barrier is
| way lower than a social network.
| anderspitman wrote:
| IMO the way to succeed as a new social network is to use the
| Slack approach. Make your tool useful to small organizations
| and communities, and then connect instances later. Slack is
| useful to my team even if no one else uses it, but it's nice to
| be able to invite anyone who uses slack into our channels.
| ricokatayama wrote:
| that's a key question. OP mentioned Path (which was an
| incredible product), but probably they struggled with the
| acquisition. One of the super powers in a social network is the
| network effect and OP need to understand how to overcome that.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks for the comment! I think it's a great question, the
| hypothesis with Circles is that a vast amount of people would
| like to share online but don't because of the dynamics of these
| other social apps make them uncomfortable.
|
| So in that the hurdle has been overcome because people are able
| to share content and interact in ways that they 'can't' do
| elsewhere. There's also a group of people (like myself) who
| avoid typical social media, so downloading a different solution
| is less of a hurdle because it's designed for them.
|
| However, you point about people 'hating' social media yet still
| using it is well and true. It's almost like fruit vs mcdonalds,
| everyone would prefer to be an avid fruit eater and have
| control of their diet, but few do in the end. In that we
| believe the only moat for social networks is providing utility
| that other networks can't - YC wrote a really good blog post on
| this in relation to WeChat
| (https://www.ycombinator.com/library/3t-how-wechat-grew-to-
| be...). We're obviously not there yet but it's a start.
|
| Also, if looking for a solution to that messaging problem,
| Beeper and Texts.com are creating something exciting there.
| Perhaps the social media equivalent of these services will be
| enabled by interoperability by DeSo, ETH or the like.
| Interesting to think about.
| fum52882 wrote:
| Hi, one of the co-founders of StoryArk (https://storyark.eu)
| here.
|
| I really like your idea. We're building something similar with a
| focus on photo sharing.
|
| Have you considered making the contact book upload an opt-in? We
| also thought about connecting our users via their phone book, but
| we chose a different approach as we're concerned about privacy.
|
| If you make the contact book upload opt-in, you at least give the
| user the chance to try out the app before giving away the contact
| details of their whole phone book (without their permission).
| jstrafy wrote:
| Hey! Love the landing page for StoryArk & thanks for the ideas!
|
| Super similar concept. A few apps I've seen pop up in the space
| are Lalo (https://www.lalo.app/) and Waldo
| (https://waldophotos.com/).
|
| Yes, we initially had it this way and it seems from this HN
| launch that's what users prefer! The feature is flagged so we
| can bring it back and will likely do so (having an opt-in as
| you've mentioned).
|
| Would be great to connect and share learnings. If you'd like
| send me an email (james@oncircles.com).
| newswasboring wrote:
| I know its frowned upon in HN to talk monetization early, but if
| I am not the product, how do you plan to sustain and grow this? I
| believe social media inherently has only one product, social
| interactions. If you users are not being charged, they are the
| product. Do you plan to charge content creators? Do you plan to
| charge for premium features? I ask because otherwise it might
| just go the way of Google+ and disappear in a few years.
|
| One idea might be to go the Pateron way but with a free tier. But
| then its something akin to youtube/tiktok not really a social
| network.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I came to ask the same question. I like the concept but if its
| going to disappear after 12 months its not worth the effort.
| spyke112 wrote:
| Same for me. I think it would be wise to think about
| monetization of these sort of apps before even writing code,
| and be up front about it towards potential customers (not
| users).
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. Having an FAQ would have been a nice
| way to cover this as it seems you're not the only one!
|
| We plan to monetise through paid premium features, none of
| which have been included in the first public version of the
| product. So previously didn't think it was relevant to talk
| monetisation!
| newswasboring wrote:
| I swear I am not trying to be a jerk, but I have heard this
| way too many times but have never seen this succeed in a way
| which adds to the service. Most of the times the paid premium
| feature is "no ads" or less wait times etc. Especially for a
| social networks, I can't even imagine what feature you can
| build which will make me pay you to be in touch with my
| friends.
|
| One point against my argument might be reddit gold kind of
| stuff. They are more of a status signal. You can monetize
| status signals.
| jstrafy wrote:
| That's a solid point and hence why we've been reluctant to
| set out a future monetisation strategy. However...
|
| In terms of monetising utility, Beeper/Texts.com seem to be
| getting a lot of attention, where they charge 10$ a month
| for their interoperable chat service. People seem to be
| happy to pay to have a centralised client for all their
| chats.
|
| Otherwise as you've mentioned you have status signals,
| which is the case for Twitter Blue too. There's also the
| dating apps.
| stazz1 wrote:
| > frowned upon in HN to talk monetization early,
|
| it is?
|
| Would you pay for a subscription to a social network without
| ads? Doesn't seem too far from an actuality
| newswasboring wrote:
| This depends directly on whether my friends will pay to be on
| that network. Game servers are a great example. I will pay if
| my friends are also on the same server.
|
| The problem is, there are way too many free options for us to
| organize. And this doesn't bring anything to the table which
| is spectacular.
| didip wrote:
| What would you do when you cannot find monetization path like
| Path did?
| jstrafy wrote:
| Well if we can't find monetisation that's a problem. I think
| we're beyond 2010 though, and people are much more open to
| paying for signal based information as shown by Substack,
| Twitter Blue, Discord Nitro, Bumble and other services.
| quaintdev wrote:
| Clickable links
|
| https://oncircles.com
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oncircles
|
| https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/circles-share-more-with-less/i...
| sackerhews wrote:
| Interesting. Will have a look when I don't need to install an app
| to use it.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Cool. Thanks for this feedback! We started with mobile because
| that's the dominant force these days but depending on movement
| it would be great to create a web-app or desktop client.
| kevincox wrote:
| I definitely agree that mobile is the way to start but I'm
| sitting in front of my computer most of the day and
| definitely don't want to be picking up my tiny phone to use
| the awkward keyboard. I'm definitely going to hold out until
| the web ui launches.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Noted!
| ghughes wrote:
| Congrats! It's impressive to go from learning to code, to
| shipping a product with this level of polish, in less than two
| years.
|
| I tried to build essentially the same thing on top of Matrix (and
| got rejected from YC in the process) - I haven't tried the app
| yet but I have some initial thoughts and questions. I really hope
| you succeed with this; forgive me if I come across as a skeptic.
|
| #1 question: every notable social app had some clever strategy
| and/or shenanigans to attract a critical mass. What's your plan
| to tackle the network effect problem? Maybe 10% of the value of a
| social app is the UX, the other 90% is that the people I care
| about are there.
|
| Are posts end-to-end encrypted, or encrypted at rest? Your video
| says E2EE but your landing page says encrypted at rest. There's
| no wiggle room for confused messaging on this. Your blog says
| you're using Matrix but one of your comments here suggests you
| abandoned that idea? If so, I'm curious to hear why. Are/were you
| sharing content directly in Matrix rooms, or storing encrypted
| content in an object store and using Matrix as a key sharing
| mechanism, or something else? Can you say more about the problems
| you encountered?
|
| The landing page design is slick, but there's too much motion
| pulling my attention all over the place, and too many red flags.
| The animation for "Automatic Contacts" evokes a feeling that
| you're going to swallow up my address book and send unsolicited
| requests to my friends as soon as I sign up. The alarm bell with
| red dot is an anti-pattern. It feels weird to see all the other
| social networks I can integrate into my profile, considering this
| is squarely aimed at people who have rejected those other apps.
|
| Your video says there are no ads, there never will be, and users
| are not the product. How, then, are you going to thrive in such
| an intensely competitive space?
| andrew_ wrote:
| Congrats on successfully switching to a new field, and the
| success of your first product. Both are difficult feats to pull
| off.
|
| I'd be interested in some comparisons between Signal Group Chats
| and this app. I understand they're not a 1:1 but could be
| opportunity for useful contrast. Particularly for privacy
| concerns, e.g. how Signal is unable to assist LEOs. Not that I'm
| up to no good, but it is interesting.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks! It's been a journey.
|
| Signal has definitely been a source of practice here. How would
| you imagine we do this comparison, on the landing page?
| katzeilla wrote:
| - your landing page says 'On Circles, your data is encrypted at
| rest. This means no ads or questionable business.', how does data
| being encrypted relate to 'no ads'?
|
| - asking for contacts while saying nothing about how you monetize
| is a huge red flag to me
|
| - since you are already using cross platform JS framework, how
| about making it available as a PWA? or maybe provide apk
| directly? google store doesn't cover a sizeable number of android
| devices
|
| - your landing page still says 2021 in its footer
| dewey wrote:
| > how does data being encrypted relate to 'no ads'
|
| I guess they are talking about data-mining your at-rest data
| for personalised ads.
| jstrafy wrote:
| - Ads on any sort of app are generally targeted. Meaning they
| use personal information, including browsing history, to serve
| you specific ads that you are more likely to click on. By
| encrypting data at rest and, asking for little personal
| information, we purposely make it more difficult for us as a
| company to serve targeted ads. Ideally it would be impossible
| and this is what we aim for in the short term.
|
| - Fair point. Noted.
|
| - Both points here would be a relatively easy step, so will
| figure something out. Thanks!
|
| - Noted. Thanks!
| akamia wrote:
| I think you need to clarify what you mean by at rest. You
| mention browser history but it's not clear to me if you mean
| that it's encrypted in the browser. If you mean it's
| encrypted within your data store on your servers, that's
| great for security but doesn't really address the ad concern.
| I'm assuming you hold the encryption keys. If that's the
| case, you can decrypt the users' data in your data store for
| ad targeting purposes.
| shafyy wrote:
| This is the only social media app that peaked my interest in the
| past few years and I will definitely give it a go.
|
| As others have asked, can you tell us more about your pricing
| strategy? I would rather that you start charging right away, so I
| know that a) this has a chance of surviving for a longer period
| of time and b) you won't fall back ot ads or the VC teat :-)
| Also, as you said, since it doesn't depend on dozens of my
| friends using it, I think it would be easier to convince a couple
| of my friends to start using and paying for it.
|
| Another question is: I'm guessing your biggest competitor are
| WhatsApp/Signal/etc. group chats. Why is it better to use Circle
| instead of group chats (which are also often organized as circles
| of friends)?
| jstrafy wrote:
| Thanks - that's awesome to hear! We're still early days and
| would love your feedback. Feel free to send me an email
| (james@oncircles.com).
|
| It would have been a great idea to add a small price in the app
| store, as my core assumption was that people would not pay for
| a social networking app alone. Maybe I will change my
| assumption there. You don't need to answer this if
| uncomfortable doing so (or can send by email) but how much
| would you pay today to know the app is sustained ad-free?
|
| Otherwise, we are fortunate to be funded by a single angel who
| gives us freedom to decide the path of the company. He invested
| with the recognition that the tides on privacy and social media
| are changing and that a more intimate, private social network
| would be a definite solution in the future (In his words, "the
| two most important parts of anyone's network are the closest
| circles and the fringes, so Circles focuses on the former").
|
| Our next stop was to build a Circles designed interoperable
| chat that would allow you to send and receive messages to
| pretty much any major third party app. We would charge for
| this. However, right now we collect no individual data from our
| users and most user information is encrypted at rest, making it
| very hard for us to build any real ads mechanism.
|
| In relation to group chats, there is a notable difference in
| how Circles are set up. In a group chat everything is shared to
| the group, and all the members are directly connected to each
| other because they are in that group. Circles in their current
| setup are closer to broadcast lists.
| gh123man wrote:
| I'd love to learn how you are handling media/photo storage from
| both a technical and practical perspective. Some questions that
| come to mind: are you using a dedicated service or did you build
| it yourself? Are you using a CDN? How do you plan to deal with
| abusive content and the liability that comes with storing photos?
|
| I am also working on an app where hosting photos would be a nice
| feature - but the risk/undertaking without proper and potentially
| expensive infrastructure is daunting.
| ageitgey wrote:
| I tried to sign up on Android and it didn't work. It texted me a
| confirmation code, but putting it in the text box did nothing
| except make it flash and disappear. If I click "Confirm Code", a
| model appears with just the text "0".
|
| Update:
|
| On maybe the fifth try, it worked. But now it's requiring my
| contact list to proceed. The app itself on the home screen is
| just called "rn-fetch-blob" (i.e. a default react native
| project). I'm not going to give contact list access to an app
| that didn't even bother to give itself a non-default name/icon on
| the home screen. I think the app needs a little more time in the
| oven before you have other people try it out.
| jstrafy wrote:
| Cool. Appreciate this. We build cross platform to give people
| choice but most dev time has been spent on iOS so its further
| ahead. Agree that the Android needs baked longer. Will fix!
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Had the same problems on iOS.
| chadanon wrote:
| Same here. And I wouldn't share my contacts regardless. That's
| a big ask before getting to any main features and not worth the
| risk to me.
|
| So a couple of thoughts: 1) Allow me to sign in and post texts
| without permissions or sharing contacts. 2) Give the option to
| ask me for photo/file access permissions when I push the photo
| upload button. 3) When adding contacts, a prompt for contact
| permission is okay then but should be optional i.e. I should be
| able to put a phone number or email address in manually. I
| don't know if you had that or not I stopped at the file
| permission.
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