Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites (townsquare.cauenapier.com)

This is amazing! Congratulations on the launch. Repository link somewhere?

First saw this on lobste.rs . Great idea, perhaps allow for a little customisation? I'd like minimal animation, just a counter of present people and a green dot that vibrates when someone is typing. Clicking either opens a chat box with last 20 minutes.

> NOTE: This project has been mostly vibe-coded

I deeply appreciate the honesty here. I’ll pass based on the vibecodedness of it but perhaps it won’t be a dealbreaker for others.

I like the idea of this like a town square for websites. Nice job

Neat idea! It's simple but very effective - and I really enjoy the detail of the benches and the tree. Very nice.

I wouldn't add it to any of my sites due to the unmoderated nature of it - seeing some fairly unsavory things in your demo - but that's just a little tweak, I'm sure!

would make more sense with webrtc.

haha nice project! I stayed there for a couple of minutes and had such a good time!

Not really a square if it's 1D - everyone ends up on top of each other.

I just took a look at the page's own 'town square'. At the moment, it's largely full of people saying offensive things for the sake of it.

I love the idea! The next step is to add role play games in town squares.

I've been playing with presence too...! I def am thinking about using it more for real-time motion communication (which is largely missing from web) rather than text (which is very overrepresented, and where most moderation comes in).

I was toying with the idea of making a little crowd representation sticky at the bottom, like watching a screen together :)

Regardless, I love concepts like this. Thanks!

Oh what the heck? That's super cool! Awesome idea. Possible future enhancement: some basic day/night (or even weather?) design elements that match the timezone of the person whose site it is? Still, doesn't even need it, it's really cool as-is!

I could see it being used as some avenue for saying toxic stuff, so I'm suddenly feeling like the only allowed actions should be ones that can never be harmful (like text interactions are just choosing from a pre-set list)..

Maybe adding rooms will be a good move

I enjoyed the design.

I've always wondered if we could find a way to add content website's content without it turning into a shitshow. MLS listings / Zillow is an interesting use-case. A realtor might describe something as "sun-filled" but omit that the home is next to a 24/7 dump truck repair warehouse.

There was a thing from the 90s kind of like this called Third Voice. It was a cool idea, but I remember there being a lot of backlash from brands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice

Really cool but should limit # of people shown when there are too many. Currently it gets really laggy

interesting. i'm appearing as a grey guy not the orange guy like your blog says

Love the idea. Could use some filters and stale (sleeping) clients could get removed quicker.

Also, it seemed to be disconnecting quite often, maybe a hug of death thing.

I made something similar last year: A p2p chat popup (that sits on bottom right of the page as a bubble) that allows all visitors to chat with each other. It had simple keyword based moderation in-built (can be easily bypassed though).

Was planning to add github oauth to get a known identity and persistent messaging so visitors can chat with each other across sites.

Instead of a webmaster adding script to their site, it was a browser extension.

The intent was two folds:

1. Get to know other people having similar interests,

2. Try something on the lines of a decentralized chat/messaging system.

This is great! Thank you for sharing it. Fun to use and already customizable.

this is a very clever concept. I'll keep it in mind for the future - when my app site has persistent amount of visitors. Are there some rules/settings for stop words to prevent some types of abuse? Or is it planned?

Moderation moderation moderation . It’s a big problem

I have similar moderation concerns in my browser game/engine but I only ban offensive slurs not swears, but I give no visual affordance that the word is not allowed

The only surface where players see the input content is in a share card, and if they finish a game and get to the share card they will find the offensive word has been REDACTED lol

So it’s a long feedback loop just to find out your hijinks lead nowhere

This was actually a lot of fun. Not as much trolling as I anticipated. Surprising amount of normal chit chat.

Matt Webb made a version of this (and wrote about it) a while back—Cursor Party: https://interconnected.org/home/2024/09/05/cursor-party

I contemplated implementing it on my site for a while but decided I didn’t want to add the JavaScript. Still find it a really cute concept.