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Show HN: My husband quit his job to build a new social audio app with Flutter (bubblic.app)

58 points by stephanietam36 ↗ HN
Wife of an app-builder here.

My husband quit his full time job at Apple to work full-time last year on a new social audio app where you are anonymous and there are no videos or images - people can only connect with their voice.

The app has been up for just less than 2 months, and it was incredible to see 300 users from all around the world leave voice messages of support for each other.

It definitely restored my faith in humanity, so much so that I decided to jump on board as a co-founder :)

We are on a mission to end loneliness that is gripping our world today, and we hope you also come onboard to get or offer support, or even just to make authentic connections with people around the world.

42 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] thread
jaybhum
Hi, husband here :)

To share with you a bit of the journey:

- from Sept to Dec 2022: built an MVP of a slightly different app using Javascript + Phaser3 as I learned how to do full-stack development. Wondered how to launch this before we latched onto the idea of creating something simpler to reach a wider audience

- Jan to Feb 2023: built a simple website for people to check in their location and how they feel by filling out a survey. You can check out the website here: https://lonelyworld.info . We got >1000 people log their location, and captured about 100 email this way by lauching on Hacker News! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34584462 And on this MVP was where I met a friend from South Africa to work on the app together!

- Feb to June 2023: built the mobile app with Flutter.

- June to now: We have continuously added features to create more values to the users, including doing our own podcasts in the app! We are hunkering down on user acquisition and refactoring the app to make it more performant.

qdot76367
Is this using webrtc for the calls? If so, How are you finding it to work with that in flutter/dart?
mrweasel
What's you plan for the app long term? I mean do you plan to found the platform out your own pocket forever?
pyrossh
I've recently caught onto the flutter bug and started creating an app my self. Really liking it. The DX is amazing.

You might need to add a splash screen by using flutter_native_splash though, 2s of blank screen is a bit misleading as if its not working.

mikrl
Did you name the app after the bublik, the bagel’s European predecessor, enjoyed from Kraków to Kyiv to Krasnogorsk and beyond?
de4n_whit3
Bubblic is an incredible project. My communication skills have improved dramatically. I went from being uncomfortable and not talking to people to enjoying having online conversations with complete strangers. Being anonymous and communicating via voice logs make for an authentic experience with others as we can openly share our thoughts and feelings. Would highly recommend it to anyone who is lonely or to anyone who would like to be an ear for others.
satvikpendem
Nice, Flutter Web has gotten much better since I last used it, looks like it's quite fast now to load whereas before it multiple seconds to load.
jaybhum
awesome! Yeah it is awesome to be able to develop on multi-platforms with a single codebase.
fakedang
Great job on the concept and love the idea of using Flutter, but please switch to a more stable web development framework. I could not load the app on my phone browser immediately, until I switched to desktop mode.

I assume it's going to be much easier for you guys to build on Android and iOS now :).

jaybhum
We actually built the ios and android versions first, then decided to also build for web so that people can easily demo the app!
apgwoz
It took about 3 clicks of a play button to find a fem voiced person lacking a romantic / sexual connection with someone, and I have to imagine even with the best of intentions, at scale, this becomes "lead gen for cam folx".

What are the plans to prevent the "adult industry-ification" of an otherwise pretty interesting project?

jaybhum
I agree that any social media has the potential be manipulated for sexual solicitation. I think we have an innate defense mechanism for that right now which is people need to leave an open voice message with their voice, share their location, and there isn't an ability to share links for people to easily click on. Plus, we do have a reporting function so that we can collect the 'yellow cards' and address the reported users appropriately.

Going forward, we are considering adding several features to mitigate it. - NSFW label to protect the experience of users who do not want it - AI to distinguish content like this.

If you have a good suggestion, I am all ears!

throwaway67743
While I'd like to look it left me on a blank page for ~2 seconds before redirecting to the actual app, it needs to be much faster as user engagement drops off almost instantly
jaybhum
Great point. We are working to optimize the load time as we have built this quickly to get it out into the world
d0gbread
What is it? I opened it up but it kinda throws you right in. Lots of recordings about being lonely. Is that what it's for, or was that some kind of prompt? Is it a mental health platform? Or is it meant to be more general, like a Twitter/Reddit but audio only?
CharlesW
Agreed, the site would benefit from clearly answering, "what is this and why should I care?". I poked around for a minute (most people will give it 10 seconds) and my impression is that it's sort of a digital lonely hearts club, or a global party line.
mrweasel
They do write: "We are on a mission to end loneliness"

I don't know, it's a noble goal, but I don't really see it being something to build an income on. Not everything has to have a commercial angle, but you need to pay for hosting and you need to pay yourself a salary. If the last few months have thought us anything is that you need to have a plan for monetization (whatever that means to you).

jaybhum
Thank you very much.

Voice connections without the element of vanity (photos, videos) can allow for authentic connections between strangers that texts cannot convey. It is what we believe in and first-hand experienced on our app.

We first want to achieve the network effect so that the platform has value to users, then we do have some premium features in mind that we can serve to enrich the experience of power users.

Thank you for your thoughtful remark!

mrweasel
Thank you for you answer, it's nice to see that there's a plan for you to pay yourself in the future, and one that doesn't involve ads or "big data". Best of luck.
jaybhum
It is the web-demo of the app that we have. On our iOS and Android app, we have onboarding pages that guide you what our mission is, and how to use the app. Sorry if the web-demo interface felt abrupt!

The goal is to facilitate people forming authentic connections using their voice in today's day and age where we are flooded with vanity-focused photos and videos and easy-to-misinterpret texts.

So far, the response from the actual users have been really great. I suggest you give it a try to connect with someone online1

throwaway920102
Just some feedback, I'm really thrown off that literally every conversation I can see just says something like "Hi, I'm lonely and this is why".

I don't understand what this is / it just feels like a survey for really short sort of useless replies to a survey on loneliness.

If the goal here is to just show a snapshot of one example of how this system works, you may want to have a modal or explanation saying "This is just an example, download the mobile app to see the full experience and other conversations".

jaybhum
That is a very good point.

On the actual app, you are able to carry a conversation with a stranger, going way beyond just sharing your short audio status messages.

We will try to capture that in the demo as well, either as an video or texts. Thank you for your feedback!

junon
Okay but I don't want to talk about loneliness to feel less lonely. Thus, the front page is really off-putting and somewhat depressing. Doesn't really make me want to use the app much.
jaybhum
Thank you for your comment. The crux of the platform is that you can connect with other people going through similar things as you from half-way across the world using the power of your voice. I think we can improve on the messaging on our landing page, but from what we have seen so far on our app, people have been able to connect with complete strangers in authentic manner thanks to using your voice.
programmarchy
Seems like there’s a bunch of spam because I see the same exact message from multiple locations but maybe I’m missing something.
theflyinghorse
The app loaded nearly instantly for me on mobile brave browser.

Seemingly flutter has gotten a lot better for flutter web. It's nice to see more adoptation of flutter

jaybhum
That is great to hear!

Sometimes it is hit-or-miss. I think it might have to do something with the AWS backend that sometimes fail to connect instantly. We plan to improve on this for next iterations.

sgt
I've built a couple of Flutter apps and one of them was Flutter web. At the time (from 2020-2022), Flutter web definitely wasn't mature enough. It was a challenge and last time I checked (earlier 2023) there were some serious issues.

However your app seems to load very quickly and I can't see any glaring performance issues, and that leads me to think that maybe Flutter web has improved significantly in the last year. I sure hope so!

hn_throwaway_99
Just a bit of my thoughts on seeing how this is being promoted, and the fine line/gray area between spam and an authentic "Show HN":

1. First, want to say kudos for building this app and putting it out there. It takes works and guts to do that.

2. "Overly promotional" submissions come off as spammy to me. Some of this is likely cultural, but things like "It definitely restored my faith in humanity" and "We are on a mission to end loneliness that is gripping our world today" are not likely to be that well received on a site like HN for an app that basically lets strangers leave voice clips. To be quite frank, I went and visited your site, and if it "restored your faith in humanity", perhaps your faith wasn't much in question to begin with.

3. Refrain from friends/colleagues leaving inauthentic comments. I don't know who "de4n_whit3" is, but the tone of his comment and his post history leads me to disregard it as BS.

Don't mean to be overly critical, but another commenter mentioned, "Agreed, the site would benefit from clearly answering, "what is this and why should I care?"", and you should try to better answer that.

jerrycruncher
I don't think you're being overly critical, especially since both user accounts seem to exist for the sole purpose of promoting the project.
jaybhum
That is a fair point. We did want to promote it on Hacker News because it is such a great forum to get the word out. We apologize if it came off as a bit off-putting.

But we do hope that our app delivered on the value that we promise.

hn_throwaway_99
Actually, jaybhum, after looking at your post history, I changed my opinion - this isn't a gray area, what you're doing is flat-out spam, and I'm glad this post has been flagged.

You just submitted a Show HN on this exact site 11 days ago, and it got decent traction and comments. You don't get a second swing at bat just by having your wife submit it.

jaybhum
Thank you very much for your feedback!

I agree with you that we should be more incisive on our messaging instead of being too promotional like a mass-market ad.

But rest assured, we were able to deliver real value to our users for the past 2 months since we have launched. The voice as a conversation medium has allowed people to connect with complete strangers at an authentic level not possible with texts, not to mention photos and videos.

To answer the basic questions:

  - what is this? : Bubblic is a social audio app where you connect with others exclusively with your voice.

  - why should I care? : The authentic human connection is getting harder to come by as the communication channels people are inundated with are low-dimension (texts) or highly focused on vanity (photos and videos) which ultimately leads to surface-level connections. We believe this is the cause for rising loneliness and mental struggles among people, especially youths, in US and around the world, and the digital and social environment is such that it is very easy to fall into the abyss of loneliness. Many don't know how to get out of it and eventually go out into the world to find friends. We want Bubblic to be the bridge that can help people get out of, or prevent getting into, the abyss of loneliness by helping them connect with others using their voice. Voice, being the most primal method of communication, has the power to help feel connected and understand others that other media do not come close to, in our opinion.
That was long winded, but we will try to get those messages clearly on our landing page.

Thank you very much, again!

nonameiguess
Sorry, but what you're describing sounds frankly impossible. You can't make an authentic connection with a complete stranger via voice clips in less than two months. Meaningful relationships take time to build, full stop. I believe, if you were truly being honest with yourself and not trying to promote a product, the "cause for rising loneliness and mental struggles" isn't that people are using communications channels with too much text or imagery. It's that their communications channels are largely mediated by a computer and involve communications with strangers in the first place. The solution isn't yet another app. It's to get off their devices and meet people physically and build true relationships, that involve not only talking to someone, but mutual obligation and care demonstrated over a long span of time across varied life circumstances that you share with one another. Sharing your life only with strangers is what causes this shallowness you see.
jd24
He should have kept his day job. What is going on with these "check in" icons on the globe? Is this just a site for people to say they're lonely? How will he monetize this site?
opsy_
Cool concept, I think it's a good mission & target, too many platforms are just content farms or for keeping up appearances.

And awesome to see what you're doing with Flutter! Looks like Map support has come a long way. Loaded well for me on desktop.

UX feedback - definitely want some more onboarding for the web experience (as others have mentioned), and maybe a smoother intro into the big space. The map view is really cool, good for generating interest, but also a bit overwhelming (where to start?).

Looks like you're onto something.