Advice on struggling to build a community for my social app against loneliness | Hacker News Reader

Advice on struggling to build a community for my social app against loneliness

bites-spectacular-site.webflow.io

7 pointschaffie10 comments

Hey everyone!

I build a social app for people that are lonely and looking for other people around them to hangout with.

Right now I am struggling to build a community around it. I am more of a developer/product manager than a business person. So I dont think I would be the right person to help this product get to the public.

What should I do, any advice?

Best, is to find cofounder with business exp, who will do business side.

But exists some "easy to gather low fruits" opportunities for start.

We could connect and talk for details.

Hi Simne thanks for the advice, would love to connect. How can I reach you?

Hi! Write me on simne007[at]gmail, other details (contacts) could negotiate there.

Thank You!

Find your business person partner

I feel like ideas like this suffer from the same issue, namely when you have an event that’s generically for lonely people you end up with a bunch of lonely people with an odd vibe. It’s like the Meetup events that are for “meeting people in your 30s”. Just ends up being the kind of event no one really enjoys going to because the people who show up have odd vibes.

In my opinion it’s probably far better to have an app that aims to be an alternative to Meetup but isn’t marketed as being for lonely people. Non-lonely people want to do things too.

That is what I initially thought! But turned out when i organised a few of these hangouts myself people turned out to be quite social. Partly because they where already able to chat before hand.

Good tip! Right now I focus the app more on helping you build your social circle if you feel like it is not big enough or you want to switch things up

It's true - if you're lonely you're probably not good at being supportive to other lonely people so it can feel weird. Something that brought together groups who are willing to be patient and encouraging that are looking for more people would probably work well, kind of like an extrovert "adopting" an introvert.

I have a book recommendation, Lost Connections by Johann Hari.

I'd also highly recommend getting a few lonely people on your phone as "product testers". Make sure you get genuine feedback from them (very difficult if you're passionate about an idea), and try to discover what their hangups actually are about engaging with existing online communities, and figure out a way you'll be attempting to resolve some of those problems for your platform.

Thank you! Yeah I have done a few of these interviews based on those I actually designed the app. Issue now seems to be the demand issue, because not much is happening people are less willing to create hangouts. Most people I interviewed now said there is not enough happening and thats why they are a bit scared to create their own hangouts

Reply on news.ycombinator.com