Comment by doitLP

7 years ago

I don’t get the invite model. Ask someone already invited to send you an invite? I guess it prevents spam reservations but I don’t have Facebook or twitter, so I guess I’m out of luck.

7 comments

doitLP

Reply
mdaniel  7 years ago

I was also curious, and found https://volkfi.com/whyinvite which has a constructive sounding heading

> Why is Volk Fi invite-only

followed by blather blather about the technology and then finally some invite-sounding text of

> But, because Volk Fi is crowdsourced, it needs a certain user density in order to have full coverage and reliability

which seems to run directly in contradiction to why one would want the system to be invite-only. Can you imagine starting a BitTorrent service, and then trying to ensure the swarm stayed small by only telling your roommates? I guess that's why I'm not in marketing.

  • crankylinuxuser  7 years ago

    Speaking of Bittorrent... This is a YC '19 company and...

    https://igamerss.com/index.php/2019/03/19/here-are-the-85-st....

    "Volk Wi-fi: Volk is making an Android smartphone with a free information plan, no service required. The co-founders say they’re utilizing long-range wi-fi to share connections and construct a community of telephones. Co-Founder Greg Hazel was the Chief Architect at Bittorrent, whereas co-founder Straya Markovic was the lead engineer at mesh messaging platform Firechat."

    So yeah, they should know better.

  • andypants  7 years ago

    Proximity is important. They want people to invite their friends, who are more likely to live near each other than a random person on the internet. They need density, not just users.

  • TomMarius  7 years ago

    Makes complete sense to me. The assumption probably is that people you invite are usually close to you.

  • taneq  7 years ago

    I'm guessing so they don't get people signing up where there are no other users anywhere nearby, and then posting bad reviews when their device never connects to any other devices.