[HN Gopher] Show HN: Ferris, social network for IRL activities w...
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Show HN: Ferris, social network for IRL activities with your
closest friends
Author : earlyriser
Score : 14 points
Date : 2022-06-25 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ferris.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ferris.app)
| earlyriser wrote:
| Hi HN!
|
| My name is Roberto and I'm the founder of Ferris, a social
| network that lets you plan and join real life activities with
| your 20 closest friends.
|
| The idea is to give you more friend-time with an app that makes
| easy to plan activities:
|
| - Spontaneous ones like a coffee on the next break
|
| - Blurry ones like going to the movies someday/somewhere next
| month
|
| - Repetitive ones like going running during the summer
|
| - Planned ones like a concert this Friday
|
| As an introvert, with a family, and in my 40s I have found it
| very difficult to have time with my friends.
|
| Existent options have their limitations, which is normal because
| they are not trying to solve this problem:
|
| - FB events or Google calendar invites feel too formal, there's
| not really a way to say "I'm going for an ice cream in 10min, who
| wants to come?".
|
| - Messaging apps have a conversational flow and it's difficult to
| keep the conversation centered into a topic.
|
| - Email has too much back & forth
|
| Ferris offers an easy way to create activities in seconds and
| invite your friends, with low pressure to accept. The feed is
| basically a list of activities where you're welcome to join. As
| you can imagine, this list is short and the app is more a tool
| than a destination with endless scrolling.
|
| Speaking of endless scrolling, I'm also trying to solve some of
| the problems exposed in The Social Dilemma, so I created
| something where you're the client and not the product (freemium
| model).
|
| I'm very happy to finally ship this. I have been working on it
| for the last 4 years... in the current form, but my original idea
| is from 2012. This soft launch is a big step for me. If I'm
| honest I'm terrified, it's not my first time launching something,
| but it's my first time creating something non-trivial as a side
| project.
|
| I hope you could give it a try! Inviting your best 3 friends
| could help you to see the dynamic.
| eutropia wrote:
| I think this is really cool. Something that enhances your actual
| social life instead of acting as a parasitic replacement for it.
| PhilippGille wrote:
| Looks pretty polished already, good job! And sounds interesting.
| It's a good focus on one thing which is important as
| differentiator to other social networks. In the past there was
| Path [1] which allowed only 50 friends, but was more generic.
| It's also great to go freemium from the start instead of ads or
| trying to be fully free until you run out of money.
|
| Some questions that I didn't find answered in the FAQ or
| elsewhere:
|
| - Why does the birth year go into the app settings and not the
| profile? And 1950 is the default?
|
| - What's the Ferris tag in the app? Like a "secret" identifier?
| In the settings section maybe this coulb be explained a bit.
|
| - In the app settings notifications are off by default. Is that
| intended? It's nice as it reduces distraction, but with the
| interactions on the app being less frequent already (one activity
| every now and then per friend with just 20 friends) I can imagine
| notifications being necessary to build traction (not the app
| itself, but also as a participant, when planning activities, I
| probably would like my friends to know without them having to
| actively open the app, especially for spontaneous activities).
|
| - I can only add friends when knowing their Ferris tag. When a
| friend doesn't use the app yet, I have to explain what it is
| myself. Maybe you could add an "invite via mail/link" feature,
| where the friend (not on Ferris yet) sees an explanation what
| Ferris is, can sign up and then automatically the Ferris friends
| relationship is established
|
| Good luck with the project!
| earlyriser wrote:
| Hi!
|
| - Birth year. This is not part of the profile because usually
| your friends know your age. It's a way to internally know which
| demography is using the app more. It's the only part of the app
| that is Ferris focuses instead of user focused. I debated if I
| just simply add a yyyy-mm-dd input and give the user the
| benefit of remembering their friends birthdays (as plenty of
| apps), but the day of birth is way more personal than the year,
| so I scrapped that part. I maybe need to add a tooltip
| explaining why I'm asking this. 1950 is just a number I don't
| think 99% of my users will have.
|
| - Ferristag: it's a secret identifier. If you go to Friends >
| Add Friend, you can see your Ferristag. You copy and send it.
|
| - Notifications: I went with the option of making the explicit
| choices, but I if you have no notifications activated you will
| see a reminder, once that you add a friend. It looks premature
| to ask for notifications permission before this could be
| useful. But yes, notification handling is maybe something I
| could make better.
|
| - Email invites: I thought about this, but finally rejected
| because it loses the personal touch and it looks spammy most of
| the time, or that my friend is getting a commission lol. I
| could rethink this based on feedback.
|
| Thanks!
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