Give it a try - let me know what you think. It's far from where I want it to be, but as a solo founder I'm forced to make decisions fast and focus on what matters.
Thank you so much that means a lot for sharing that. You are absolutely right, and I'm still just at 1% of what I intend to build if people love what I am doing. The complexity is real.
Where can I read anything about this? I'm clicking around your site but my only options to find out anything seem to be downloading and installing it?
I watched your 30-second video, I still don't know if this is a Twitter, a Nextdoor, or a WhatsApp. Either way I don't understand why I would use it given those products exist. What does it do?
I agree the site needs to be refined but I am doing everything myself so time is limited to do so. In essence, what I am trying to build is messaging with a discovery element that is either location bound or global. Because you use whatsapp mostly with friends and family, nextdoor for your neighbours, and twitter is about following people in most cases.
This is focused on the quick discovery and exchange of thoughts with people who are, for example, in your city, at a local festival, campus, etc. In those cases I do not think you like to first browse through FB groups or discover whatsapp/discord/etc. links just to connect with people and actually exchange thoughts if it's a relatively basic topic. Time will tell if my hypotheses are right.
I feel your pain as a solo developer but the quality of your app won't matter if no one installs it. And your reply right here has more words than your entire website, so it's not like an improvement is that far out of reach.
You can delete all your user data. For now, it's compliant with Apple and Google policies as it is with most countries. More refined policies will be added later but rest assured, I'm adamant about making sure users can easily delete all their data.
Your blog has an article "Comparing the 10 most popular messaging apps in the world." that ends with yours. But I'm pretty sure Wire and Matrix are more popular so this is unfortunately slightly wrong. Maybe you could dedicate a section to your app, with a title like "How does X compare to these popular options"?
This comparison is also missing the top number one feature of Signal and Telegram for me: their apps are open source. This is, in my opinion, the main thing that needs to be solved in messaging and I've managed to avoid any of the widespread closed ones so far.
It's an interesting premise. I built something similar at a company over 10 years ago. It was a side feature of our messaging platform and focused on existing contacts, though. It never really took off, so we eventually removed the feature.
That said, best of luck! The world has changed a lot in 10+ years, and interacting with internet "randos" is much more of a thing now.
That's interesting! I agree with your your statement that the world has changed. I think it might be the right time to do something like this now based on my research into trends, consumer behaviour for these things etc. Time will tell - if I can get it off the ground I do see it work but it won't be easy that much is certain. Thank you so much for commenting!
>3. What data do you collect about me?
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 47.0 ms ] threadOnly people that actually tried to build a messaging app know the kind of work it represents in order to have a good user experience.
I watched your 30-second video, I still don't know if this is a Twitter, a Nextdoor, or a WhatsApp. Either way I don't understand why I would use it given those products exist. What does it do?
This is focused on the quick discovery and exchange of thoughts with people who are, for example, in your city, at a local festival, campus, etc. In those cases I do not think you like to first browse through FB groups or discover whatsapp/discord/etc. links just to connect with people and actually exchange thoughts if it's a relatively basic topic. Time will tell if my hypotheses are right.
This comparison is also missing the top number one feature of Signal and Telegram for me: their apps are open source. This is, in my opinion, the main thing that needs to be solved in messaging and I've managed to avoid any of the widespread closed ones so far.
That said, best of luck! The world has changed a lot in 10+ years, and interacting with internet "randos" is much more of a thing now.
Do you want an iris scan too?