Ask HN: What are your thoughts on an app to help introverts make friends? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are your thoughts on an app to help introverts make friends?

8 pointsivos_android12 comments

What are your thoughts on this business idea.

App that helps lonely introverts build a circle of 3 to 5 close friends.

15 years ago such 'app' used to be called a message board. There were many of these in existence. A lot of them were small enough that after a while, you would start to recognize usernames. Many had moderation relaxed enough that you could have fun threads about nothing in particular.

Anonymity was encouraged, which was great - it made absolutely no difference what one looked like, what gender they were etc.

There was no specific focus on making friends. In my opinion, joining something that has a friend-making purpose immediately makes it a bit awkward and makes interactions somewhat forced. Much better if friendships are forged 'accidentally', which happened a lot on those websites.

Threads and replies would be sorted by latest post, not by any notion of 'rating', and threads would never really expire. These made conversation more natural and discouraged people from just posting what they thought would be popular or risk not being even noticed.

After a while, people might have exchanged instant messenger contacts, which also had the benefit of being anonymous. People also were not online all the time, so could 'disconnect' any time, which also helped with feeling comfortable about it.

Search engines would show these message boards in search results, which meant that like-minded people would find them in similar ways and already have something in common.

Then antisocial media came along and made us all less connected.

Excellent reflection on message boards. You are the second person to mention this "joining something that has a friend-making purpose immediately makes it a bit awkward and makes interactions somewhat forced". If I understand correctly, you're saying it's important for people to feel like a friendship can happen naturally, they wouldn't want to feel like the situation was awkward. It's better if things could flow naturally with no pressure.

I would focus on helping them find things to do in their city, friend-match based on that, and encourage repeated hangouts.

Why?

1. People usually make friends through engaging in common interests. This takes time.

2. Building a business takes time. Selling tickets to local events and products/coupons to local small businesses gives you have a sustainable revenue model whose incentives are aligned with your mission.

3. You could easily expand into being a dating app for married couples who are bad at planning date nights.

This is so true! One of the main pillars of friendship is consistency which takes time.

In general I say these friends are found as we suffer together through school or summer camp. For those less-fortunate, or who fall out of friendship, I can see an app like this being useful for some. I’m more likely to make friends incidentally, doing something where the focus is not to make friends. An app whose express purpose is connecting people like this might be trying too hard? Maybe not—-dating platforms are useful, for example. I made some temporary friends during my MMORPG days, time I now consider unhealthily spent. I hope your project works and helps people find friends—-good luck!

Thanks for the feedback. I never considered the "trying too hard" aspect. If I understand you correctly, it might be hard for people to broadcast the fact that they are having trouble making friends. Sorry to hear that the friends from the MMORPG days were temporary. Thanks again for the advice.

Oh, I’m not sure I miss them. They were fine friends in the moment, and we could be friends again, but I’m not sure how to find them, one might be dead by now (was an old guy at the time), and I’m happy with the small number of close friends I have now. If they went away for whatever reason I’m confident I can make new friends, and maybe I’d turn to an app like yours, so thanks for your efforts!

It will work as long as Gender is anonymous. As soon as it appears, same age old game of cat-mouse begins. Guys will chase girls. It is so fundamental to us, maybe you can find a way to escape this :)

Great point I've been thinking about this. I'm thinking that people would only interact in groups of 3 or more maybe that will help. But I will definitely keep this in mind.

As an introvert myself, I think that the idea is fantastic! I suffer from anxiety and making friends can be very difficult, but having an application to be able to connect us introverts to each other....sounds like a very good idea!

Lonely introvert... as an introvert myself I find this to be an oxymoron

Pretty close to 100% of introverts desire some form of friendship and companionship.

Being shy and uncomfortable in social situations doesn't mean you want to be forever alone.

There's at least two conflicting definitions of introversion though. Some think that it has nothing to do with shyness and is just a preference for solitary activity and being reflective and reserved. However even in that case it would be extraordinarily rare for a person to not ever want anyone else in their life at all.

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