I'm building it because it is a problem I've faced among my friends and well.. the "millennial" generation to begin with. I'm building it first to be used among myself and friends.
I don't want to say too much because to me the solution seems so obvious and I'd like to have something out there and tried on a small scale first, but... the key is not to focus on events directly, but people.
If anyone would like to know more, my twitter is on my profile, DM me there!
Right now it is just me. I'm also currently torn on focusing on the consumer social space (not social network) or the business space. Both seem pretty promising targets but vastly different approaches to marketing.
I'd love to know more - your profile seems to be missing your email though (the main email in your HN profile is default private; you have to add it to the About section to be visible).
Thawd focuses on getting groups of people out to events, not just one at a time. The idea is you tell the app what you want to do, and Thawd will find other people interested in the same thing and use personality matching to create groups of people who can hang out and have a good time together.
Hoping to get submitted to app stores by EOW.
(and yes, turns out getting users is easy, getting events is the hard part!)
I built a site like that focussed around adhoc events for people of similar interests. But when I looked at the business model I saw a few difficulties:
* If it was effective users would probably stop using it and switch directly to something like whatsapp
* Judging by meetup, a few people actually create events and greater percentage attend. This seems common across many platforms - 5-10% of users are actually producers, but a much larger are "passive" consumers. My site focussed on adhoc events and I wasn't sure enough users would create them
* The real issue was needing to promote it hyperlocally, meaning each new location needed marketing. A site focussed around groups can build a history of events for each group which aids discoverability/SEO. But a site that's all about adhoc events doesn't have that benefit in the same way if members are more amorphous (my site was all about creating e.g. an event to play tennis that afternoon, so depended on locality).
I couldn't solve these issues and abandoned it. Good luck though.
Originally I was algorithmically generating events using Google's wait time information, but I switched models to having local businesses post up events. If it takes off I'll let people post their own events as well, but that has some serious safety concerns in comparison to events at public venues.
This is a relief for me personally, because I've also been thinking about building something that fits this need, and seeing how many people are trying to enter the space by now makes me realize it's about to get very crowded and now I don't feel nearly as bad not getting involved.
Am interested in learning more but your contact info is twitter without DMs open (have to be mutually following). Mind opening DMs or posting your email to the about field on HN? Thanks!
I'm building it because it is a problem I've faced among my friends and well.. the "millennial" generation to begin with. I'm building it first to be used among myself and friends.
I don't want to say too much because to me the solution seems so obvious and I'd like to have something out there and tried on a small scale first, but... the key is not to focus on events directly, but people.
If anyone would like to know more, my twitter is on my profile, DM me there!
Right now it is just me. I'm also currently torn on focusing on the consumer social space (not social network) or the business space. Both seem pretty promising targets but vastly different approaches to marketing.