> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin.
> So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of the domain name friendster.com.
I don't know anything about how to project future ad revenue of a domain, but would this be likely to be valued at only $10,000? Unless I'm misremembering my limits, even if it made $4,500 next year and continued to cut in half every year after that, it would still account for $9,000 of revenue projecting indefinitely into the future, even bumping that up to something like 60% of the previous year's revenue it would already put it at more than $10,000 (although I don't know whether ad revenue tends to scale with inflation or not; my instinct is that the prices of ads probably would roughly increase with inflation over time)?
I know I'm nitpicking a bit about the title, but I can't help but actually be curious now that I thought of this.
You are absolutely right and that jumped out at me. I should also point out the obvious: if people were selling online assets making $9k/year for $9k, there would be a line out the door of people lining up to buy them. If anyone here is selling an asset that makes $X a year for $X, I'll buy it! I make my money back in 12 months and everything else is profit.
So let's value it as it would be valued on, say, Flippa, a decent proxy for "the market." We would look at the monthly revenue: in this case, around $750/mo (which is 9k divided by 12). Then we'd do a multiple of the monthly revenue: 20 is low, 40 is normal. I would actually say 30 here, because this guy created the asset and I would bet he did it well and it's not junk. So let's say it's worth $22.5k.
So I think it would be more accurate to say, "I purchased the site in a deal through assets valued at about $42k, total."
[edit: updated the comment as I got confused about the thing being exchanged - it's a site the guy created that he transferred to make the sale]
Yeah, but you have to scale the projections for uncertainty about the future, and exaggeration by the seller.
In particular, if someone on the internet tells me they’re making $x a month from spammy ads on a squatted domain, I immediately discount the claim substantially due to bullshit. I increase the discount rate if the person making the claim is trying to sell me said domain.
If you had a steady investment opportunity with 10% return (about in line with long-terms stock market returns), $9000 per year indefinitely is worth the same as $99000 now (in an idealized finance world. In the real world you can't invest $99000 and withdraw $9000 per year because withdrawals during downturns will take out too much. But it's a quick way to calculate equivalent values).
That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)
Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford
Good analysis. if I was the author I would have just borrowed 20k in a personal loan and paid it off in three years. Of course he may be exaggerating that he gets 9K in Ad revenue per year or he knows that it's going to decline
I imagine that $9k ad revenue is a site that had an actual user base. And that the guy taking over the domain is going to just put all ads and no content, like he had on Friendster.com. And if so, the expected ad income is probably much lower.
From what I can tell, The upper bound on price for any site making less than 100k a month is 24 months of revenue, but the more common is around 12 months.
The buyer takes on substantial risk because it's easy to fake the numbers, and google updates can tank the site at any time.
Also, most sites will require maintenance/upkeep to keep earning, or they can tank quick. Even if they have got evergreen content, without updates google might drop their search ranking.
You can check out similar sales on flippa.com - ad revenue does not last forever, even if it’s existed for years. And revenue is very much not profit, you could create a site and get $100/day in ad revenue tomorrow but it would cost you $200 in ad spend.
The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.
Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site
If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.
See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"
I think the tapping phones feature -- for initial friend creation, not upkeep -- is THE killer feature of the app.
Do I want my teens on any social media apps? No.
Would I let them be on Facebook of 2006, when you were just connected to your friends and family, and not influencers and "the algorithm?" Sure! That and early Instagram were great ways to keep up with real-life friends.
If you made this as easy and pleasant to scroll through as 2011 Instagram was, with only-real friends allowed, I might even return to social media myself. It would beat having to WhatsApp my family my vacation photos.
(And heck, if this got big enough that celebrities were bumping phones with fans, heck, at least that's a more intentional connection than Insta forcing the latest wellness guru on my teen girl.)
It also doubles as a way to verify that someone is a real person using their real identity, which is starting to become pretty important these days. If Alice and Bob are both on this platform, the confidence Alice can have in the proposition "the Bob account is really controlled by a guy named Bob who really knows some people I know, as opposed to being AI or an overseas scammer" would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them. That sounds useful.
Easy to do, easy to implement but hard to bypass.
Also it tells me something about the network that is not vying for a slice of the attention economy and isn't going to do everything it can to keep me on the site.
> The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing
Optimizing for time spent on the platform is exactly what results in the current social platforms. The idea that the platform itself should be appealing and not a tool to connect with each others is in itself toxic IMHO
You're right. I don't think I could continue living if one of my friends died and a I could no longer view their social media profile on a site designed to foster in person connections. I really can't think many things worse than this.
You are saying you would kill yourself if you could not see you dead friend on some app? On the contrary it should be easy for a relative to remove a deceased individual from social media, especially so that they are not captured to be zombie-bots liking some far-right posts years they have been gone. Meta doesn’t give a shit about this, but tapping phones would actually solve this problem by itself. If you are not online nor tap phones with anyone for say a year, your account dissappears.
I have a heap of family and friends who live in a different country to me. I'd love an old school Friendster / early Facebook-style social medium where we could share posts, but the tapping mechanic makes this impractical for me.
As others have mentioned, “Bump!” did it 15 years ago and it was little more than a novelty, despite its Google acquisition. iOS has also had the tapping-phones-to-connect feature baked in for years (NameDrop) and no one uses it. Curious how that OS-level functionality might conflict with the app-level bumping. That aside, w all respect to the poster, it strikes me that they took that comment and ran with it before doing any research. There’s definitely a better solution to the problem, and I hope they find it.
While this probably could only be done with the cooperation of Apple/Google, something like what they did for contact tracing during the pandemic would be ideal. Picking up that you were in the proximity of various friends without any active effort.
I don't really like the idea of an app telling me how to manage my friendships, my view is that people can handle their relationships without intervention. I'm not sure what problem it is trying to solve.
It’s interesting to read the comments here. People seem to be either strongly for, or strongly against this tapping feature. I bet the split correlates to whether all your friends live in the same town as you.
For me, I already know what the handful of people who live in my little town are doing. I see them all the time. An app like this is for keeping up for the rest of my friends who live out of town and I might only see in person every few years.
> I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.
People just shouldn't look to the online digital world for connection with dead loved ones. It's entirely impractical and one day after a bankruptcy or when it's no longer profitable it may just disappear. It can take years or weeks.
I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook, and at that point I stopped scrolling the results.
For a moment I thought maybe the app was US exclusive or something and not available in my region.
But following the link from the post worked fine and I could install it.
I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
Anyway, installed the app finally thanks to the link.
When a new app is released, it takes a few days for it to get into search, for some reason. Pretty much every single time a new app releases I see a comment like this. Nothing malicious you just have to wait a bit.
The first result is a sponsored result, and even after Friendster is indexed, if they don't pay apple's extortion-rate, the first result will still be for some other social media app.
Ads in the app store are malicious. There are people who have searched "Ledger bitcoin wallet", clicked the first link (a malicious app who paid apple enough money to be 'sponsored' for that search), and had all their money stolen.
> You’d have to be specifically watching the domain friendster.com at the right time to find and participate in the auction, or you’d have to actively watch gname.com daily to see this auction.
You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
> You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
I looked into this a while ago and I'm pretty sure that there are hundreds of these services and even ones you can host yourself. No idea how well they work though.
> the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.
Isn’t it insane that Apple refuses for an app to be listed on the App Store if it is intended to be niche? If true that’s pretty shocking
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a quarter of the time, and PWA about 10% of the time. That’s across all users, including desktop, so the PWA actually had an unfair advantage.
People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs, especially for social media.
People say PWAs are good as apps now and feels like an app now, personally as ab armchair nobody I doubt the retention rate actually compare, even if the app was literally just a plain WebView.
We’re not normies, so take that with a grain of salt. Here’s mine: apps have access to significantly expanded capabilities which has privacy implications. If I can use the browser for a given app, I do it. Amazon for example.
Personally I'll only install FOSS apps on my phone and I go out of my way to actively discourage (to varying degrees of success) my relatives from installing arbitrary junk that they surely don't need on their phones.
This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends.
I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a friend so they can take a photo and then download it, and immediately connect us, would be huge.
Do you have any kind of development plan for new features?
What I was describing is a way to quickly onboard a friend who I want to friend, because chances are zero of my friends will have this app yet.
If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.
Wow, the phone tap requirement, love it! And your ethics, the best part.
Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):
Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)
Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.
It’s almost unfair for me to say this, still registered on Meta properties… even need them for work… uhg!!! Zuck pls retire to do philanthropy & hire OP
> Fading connections. If two friends go a full year without tapping phones, the link between them softens. Not a punishment — a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online.
I have this guy whom I used to be in touch with but now we meet every seven years randomly - happened two times already in completely different places and we're due for a meeting this year.
I would rather maintain this connection, because it's always fascinating to catch up after years.
> All of this is built around the simple idea that real friendships happen when you actually meet in person.
I understand the sentiment - but this would make it useless for my closest friends - we live in different cities and countries now - and it would take years to fill in the social graph. We would all have to travel and meet everyone else.
I suppose this is alleviated by the talk to a friend of a friend feature - but does sound like it partially excludes friends with limited mobility.
I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant now. Same with other celebrities, like Kim Kardashian. If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
If you want a business model, require payment for long-term subscriptions or large celebrity/news accounts, but you have to overcome the network effect first. Maybe have a dozen or so permanent connections to start with, like MySpace's 8 priority friends.
I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
Facebook has that feature and has for many years. That is a good idea, but there are many bad ideas that negate the good ideas even when the good ones are implemented.
i think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit
opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform
they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.
> If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
This is a weird comment because it treats connections like they're only an asset for the person being followed.
The people doing the following aren't even considered. They're supposed to continuously re-follow the people they want to follow?
I don't see any upsides to this for anyone. I'm not reading social media every day. I don't want the network to automatically expire my follows and force me to remember and re-discover who I want to follow all the time. I don't want the people I follow feeling like they desperately need to pursue relevance instead of just being themselves.
If Selena Gomez is "socially irrelevant" then why do you care that she has 400 million followers? What does this take away from you in any way?
Because I don't want to see all her posts on my timeline anymore. I have to actively unfollow her to do that, which is more work.
That's more work than even following someone, because it asks for confirmation or pops up a separate modal to unfollow, which it doesn't do for following someone. And so I don't even bother.
This leads to stale social networks and algorithmic timelines.
What does this mean? Like in practical feature terms and benefit to the end user?
Your system kills the social networks ability to act as someone's modern day rolodex of contact information of previous acquaintances. What do they get in exchange for that?
As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree.
An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.
real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its first season putting the pathologies of social technologies on display that record everything.
Nah, bad idea. The timeframe of an active connection really varies by age and type. Some important connections are once-every-few-years communications. A year, or two years, etc is too arbitrary.
I would hate it if the system removed nodes from my network without my influence. Perhaps a rules engine with user defined criteria would be useful.
Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it.
400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez relevant” and it responded with essentially “more in 2026 than ever.”
Could potentially show you withering connections you havent interacted with, almost an auto recycle bin with the option to dig on there and bring it back later on but dissapear from your main radius of attention if withered.
I don’t post on Facebook—HN is my closest analogue. But I assure you my partner(s) have no interest in seeing whatever I post here. Any more than I want to be in the thick of the extended-family group chats. Or, frankly, Facebook.
In that sense, maybe this is Facebook doing its part for domestic harmony…
Followers is a somewhat meaningless metric. Instead look at something like likes or views. The most relevant posts will spread via the algorithm and get the most views.
Any chance of making the code open source? Would love to contribute to this and build more features needed. It’s an absolute bliss to see such a clean UI and no nonsense. I think you should consider that. Thanks for building this
> So I created an iOS app for Friendster, and I made it so that in order to connect with someone as a friend, you have to actually tap phones together in real life.
And thus ensured your social network won't have 72% of the world on it... And locally for anyone outside the USA, a far higher percentage.
Too bad Apple wouldn't allow the registration requiring the tapping - it would have been cool if whole social network was a tree with a single root - the founder.
Ofc it's probably for the better if it's to have a chance to spread at least a little.
> this failed Apple App Store review because of Guideline 4.2 — Design — Minimum Functionality. They said “the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.”
This is why we need laws regulating mobile platforms. Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you use your phone for, or what apps you can give to your users. Doesn't work that way for PCs, shouldn't work that way for computers in your pocket.
Not trying to defend App Store policies, but writing this just for those who are struggling with Guideline 4.2 trying to publish an app that is only intended for a small group of users. There is a less well-known option called "unlisted app distribution", similar to unlisted YouTube videos: the app is public and can be downloaded using the direct link, but it cannot be found in App Store search. The "small, or niche, set of users" guideline normally does not apply for such apps.
To request unlisted distribution for your app, send it for review as usual, then file a special form [1], and mention that in the review notes.
Source: I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school. Its audience is, indeed, not of Apple scale: the school parents living nearby. Apple refused it as 4.2 and only agreed to publish it as unlisted, which I was okay with, because sharing the link between the parents was not a big deal. Google had no problems with publishing the Android app normally though.
> I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school.
Why would you not just make this a webpage, and then the users could add it to home page as if it were an app? no Apple review necessary then. What does it being an app give you besides bureaucratic headaches?
I often get in trouble on HN for being more sympathetic than most towards Apple. But that reasoning by Apple is ridiculous. They allow apps which only function if you buy a specific $100k+ EV, or some niche audiophile amp. Usefulness doesn’t get much more limited than that.
What even is the idea, what would be the value in weeding out niche apps, if they did it consistently? To reduce the work involved in keeping everything in the garden lovely?
I don’t believe that the government should police what types of computers I can build. I occasionally tinker with hardware myself and have been thinking up ways to build a smartphone differently. If I want to make the device so that it only interoperates with a certain class of items, I would rather build nothing at all than be forced by the government to interop with everything, which is also a costly thing to develop.
I get it that people want more freedom from their iPhones but the thing about consumer devices is that they are an expression of a certain philosophy of how computers should work. Being a walled garden is one such approach. If you don’t agree with how a device operates on principle, you should not buy it—there’s Android or derivatives. You’re also likely to be a power user who’s in an incredible small minority because iPhone sales keep getting better every year and the walled garden approach has market (as in free market) validation.
Now, if your objective is to regulate monopolies, I think that the policing should happen in the supply chain and production side instead of the consumer software side. You don’t have more options than iPhone and Android because big players like Apple and Samsung have captured manufacturing facilities with long-term exclusivity contracts, making innovation in the space prohibitively expensive. But the law shouldn’t dictate what sort of computer innovators are allowed to build.
It’s uncomfortable to agree because I think companies should decide what they do and don’t allow in the ecosystems they own. But once an ecosystem becomes so pervasive & necessary, I think control must be turned over to the people.
That rule reminds me of Raya. Isn't the whole idea of that service (which is only available on iOS, I think) that it's only intended for a small group of users, who've been invited?
Wording can go a long way - calling it early access, and saying invitations will allow you to invite your friends as the platform opens up can paint a similar picture in a different way.
Apple also shouldn't force you to use Safari if you install Chrome on iOS, but so far the DOJ hasn't followed through with the antitrust lawsuit started under the previous administration. I guess gold participation trophies are enough to work around lawsuits depending on who is in charge.
They dictate the capabilities that their device is offered and how the device is designed. It is up to the consumer to decide if that is worth the price of the device.
You are correct and I don't get OP's point. Don't want apple rules, don't use apple products. They are the business, they can do what they want with it, right?
There are standards for interoperability and user-friendliness with all kinds of devices, and we should expect the same from modern devices.
It would have been pretty peculiar and unacceptable if your telephone in the 80s couldn't call your neighbour because the telephone company just decided to not make them interoperable, why shouldn't it be the same here?
Not for long if Google has any say about it. Hardware remote attestation is here, and it's the number one threat to mobile computing freedom.
The future is one where everyone can, theoretically, install anything they want, but they get banned from everything should they actually do so. Rooted system? Attestation fails. "Oh no, looks like someone tampered with the system". Can't access your bank account. Can't communicate via WhatsApp. Can't watch something on the streaming services. Can't even play video games.
Discrimination against "untrustworthy" devices, where "untrustworthy" means not corporate owned. Leading to complete ostracization.
That would immediately exclude 124 million Americans. Freedom of choice would be giving us the same choice we already have on PCs. We shouldn't keep allowing the mobile duopoly to control this vital and ubiquitous resource for their profit at our expense.
A dream I had last night was for a social network based on the deep but brief conversations we have in park benches, club toilets, hospital waiting rooms. Where we are totally open somewhat vulnerable but free from commitments. Think about the first conversation you have had with a friend, often it's the most revealing or deep one you may have.
Somewhat anonymous, short in time, one to one, with the potential to connect afterwards on outside channels. Possibly only one conversation a day allowed, and possibly only available to pre set contacts.
The previous owner bought it for $8000 (quite less for domains like this) but here is the catch. This domain has a bad reputation and a lot of negativity since it has a long history.
Those who are in domain name business knows that because it affects the value of every expired/operational domain.
Craigslist never sold afaik, theres loads of other example companies worth more than a billion now that never sold. Depends how you define "project" of course, but you gotta make sure you don't define it such that this would no longer be a "project" when it's worth 1bn. Also everything that sells for more than 1bn is something that presumably nobody would sell for 1bn.
The idea that anyone would sell any project for 1bn is kinda nonsense, if a project looks worth buying for 1bn to someone, it may look to be worth keeping to the people who made it or are in control of it.
It is good to point out this alternative is 90% likely going to be a rugpull on "nice cosy 90s style social network" by systemic factors. Regardless of the intent of the owner.
I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.
I mean.. yeah. That's why no "Facebook like 2007" social networks have happened since. It would have to be run by someone with a lot of built up trust in order for people to trust it in the way that people did with Facebook. The world has been burnt.
If say, Valve started a social network I would consider using it because they've had decades to screw up Steam and they haven't. It is a bit outside their wheelhouse though.
I agree. There should be a hierarchy of intimacy, as it were, in order to initiate a friendship.
* Tapping Phones
* Confirming Phone Number
* Confirming Email
* Connected via Other Platforms (Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, etc)
As far as maintaining a friendship by tapping phones, again, I would make the friendships a constant and graph / rank intimacy by how often you tap phones as well as how connected you are to your friend (phone, email, connections on other networks).
I love the idea of hierarchy of intimacy, that is a great concept/phrase.
I'd make it so you could tap a phone, you know their phone number, you know their email. Importantly in my eyes, you shouldn't be able to navigate to a profile and just ask to connect as that'd mean you could do that to people you don't actually know (whereby knowing is inferred by you knowing some amount of their personal info such as tap, phone, email).
I'd stay away from your last option of 'other platforms', per my other reply below in that those platforms allow you to connect to anyone/anything. There is nothing in them that say this connection is inherently personal vs being generic.
I hate phone numbers and hate given them out and I hate that I'm required to even have on in 2026. I'm reachable without one. The majority of my friends do not know my phone number. Only the really old ones from back before messaging apps with free calling
In my head, the new Friendster owner wants to drive some amount of true personal connection - hence the tapping.
The problem I see with not using a phone number as I described, is that you'd be connecting to any old social profile - could be Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
None of those are inherently personal, it'd open up Friendster to be not materially different to any other social network as those networks don't have the concept of a personal connection - they are just generic connections (some are personal, many/most are not).
I attended a concert last night and was wishing for this exact kind of app, being able to quickly exchange a follow with someone you just met in real life but will otherwise never see again unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward. Could spawn some special relationships.
> unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward
How is this any less awkward? "Oh do you have the new Friendster app?" "Friendster? Isn't that from the 1900s?" "No, the new Friendster, see you download it, register, then we bump phones...."
Maybe just because I'm an autistic introvert, but the idea of asking someone to exchange numbers is terrifying enough, but at least this is an almost universal social ritual that people understand implicitly. I ask if you want to keep in touch and exchange phone numbers. I do not need to explain literally anything else and the other person almost always knows what I mean, how to do it, and what thin social relationship that implies. And if they don't seem to understand or are hesitant, but are otherwise coherent and cogent, I take the message that they don't want to keep in touch.
Now add a new app to download (iPhone only), a new social network to register, a new social ritual... Are they being hesitant because this is a new app or because they don't actually want to keep in touch? No thanks.
I love that you're looking to "spawn some special relationships" but are unwilling to ask for a name/number. There's no app in the world that will stop you from "wishing" you took action in getting some girls number.
If you meet someone this often to touch your phones, why do you even need to have an app to talk to that person? The beauty of social apps is that I can talk to someone who I can’t physically meet that often
When you're building a social networking site like this, when do you need to start to worry about laws from different states and countries (eg age bans, data export, etc)?
I mean, it's good to be aware from the beginning, even if you don't intend to follow them right away.
But, my rule of thumb is you don't really need to worry about laws from places where they don't have real jurisdiction on you. If they filed suit, would you rather respond or make a note to never visit that place / would you be ok if all your users from there were blocked from contacting you by law?
As a guy who used to run game servers[0] and some other small-web stuff, I hate that this is one of the first questions that springs to mind today, but I'd also like to know.
[0]: in ancient times when server meant an actual server
The only thing I liked when I did use Facebook was the "wall". To be able to post on a friend's wall semi- publically where their friends can see it. Most other Facebook clones have had the idea of tagging, but it wasn't the same. (E.g. Google+)
Does the new owner of the domain friendster.com also own the company, the patents and the other pieces of intellectual property? The article seemed to be unclear about this.
That's a great question, since the genesis of this was the domain name, which no one using the app will care about or visit. That is, the only thing that was actually needed here was the trademark, it appears.
why not a proper Progress Web App so it can run on any device independent of app stores? it's not as though a social app needs deep OS integration. I'm sure Claude or Codex could vibe code that in an afternoon.
For the record, the feature you describe was first introduced on Samsung phones 14 years ago - and later removed, likely after poor adoption. Because Apple "reinvented it", it's now planned to be reintroduced on Android too.
I have sliver of idea for social media based on curiosity and knowledge tidbits.
Each user gives itself some field of interest, maybe its makeup, maybe its molecular biology, maybe it's something else. Then the system finds similar people with same interests.
There are no subreddits with abusive moderators, no rigid containers. Just that you get content you are interested in based on genuine people. Then you can like talk to them about these things or see them posting about the stuff
and you get separate feeds for each kind of stuff,probably ai categorization
I really like the idea of a “facebook before it got bad “, with just people you actually know posting about what they’re up to.
But the “tap phones” thing wouldn’t work for me.
Most of my friends and family live halfway around the world from me. I visit the states every couple years, and make a point of seeing them when I can, but the reality is I live here and they live there (a dozen different theres in half a dozen countries)
Those are the people I want an app like this to keep up with. But they’re the people your app won’t even let me add as friends.
What does "a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue" look like? Is this domain one where people randomly stumble upon it and give ad views to a parking page? A website with regular use or other content that people visit for some purpose that is now under different ownership?
I remember Friendster being very popular in parts of Latin America / Brazil and Philippines. I think you could definitely get a lot of users through the nostalgia factor.
What if somebody's phone is of an alternative type, like a flip phone, and they can't install the app needed to tap phones? Then how will they become friends with another
This is quite amazing. I remember being on the original friendster way back in the day. They had so much potential. And there was also orkut.com that was even better because of the simpler UX. Then came Facebook and you all know the rest.
This sounds cool and similar to something I’ve been building! I say similar as we have different ideas and target audiences — What I’m building is a niche network specifically targeting people who are travellers or friends that like holidaying together. I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming or self promoting so will keep the link out but will share if people want.
Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.
Who visits those long expired domains to generate ad revenue? People nostalgic? People who hear this Friendster thing and want to check out what they are doing now?
Right? And who clicks the popups? I have no clue about the economics of online ads, but my understanding is, it is cents per click. This would mean hundreds of thousands visits per year? Sounds like there are bots involved to me.
There are loads of dead links hovering around on the internet, no doubt plenty of people (and bots convincing enough that advertisers still pay out) will accidentally end up on one of these domains, sigh at the annoying ad that interrupted what they were doing, and never return.
I don't use WhatsApp, but I've noticed a similar trend more generally. I've got several Matrix group chats with friends and family I regularly post in, a handful of small to medium IRC channels with internet friends I've talked to for years, etc. It feels like Twitter and Instagram and so on are a lot less personal now, just curated posts based on the algorithm, and lots of people who've decided they're comedians. I even will link an interesting post from a social media site in a group chat pretty often, but don't interact with the people from that chat on social media platforms themselves.
I just made a similar idea focused on games only with people next to you, https://lorehex.co/ can you reach out to me and we can connect? my website and contact info at jperla.com
That's so cool. I would have expected for the domain to go for hundreds of thousands or millions, or, more likely, not not be purchasable for some reason. I can see a future where google.com is purchased for fun by some robot in 200 years.
>I don’t really care about making money from [$project], but I’d like it to eventually pay for itself.
Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).
Just a thought: you could incorporate a non-profit to run the site, like Wikipedia or public radio/media, and be the president of that organization. For me, donating to a non-profit is much easier than a voluntary subscription to a for-profit corporation.
Love the app, I’ve already had some photos shared with me!
The tapping phones thing really limits the utility of this, and I suspect gives away something about the age of the author - as one gets older, friends move away from the place where you originally made friends, often all over the world. Given I'm not allowed to connect with most of my friends via friendster, there doesn't seem to be much point in creating an account.
Have you spent much time thinking about how the feed will work? Balancing the “quality” and enjoyment with the prioritization of “people you met in person”. I’m sure I’m far from the only one who misses the old Facebook feed, but curious what a modern take on that would look like.
The tap-to-connect constraint makes this work. Every social network removes friction; this one keeps it on purpose. Won't scale to billions, but maybe that's the point.
lmao i cannot stand medium. the amount of articles i've clicked into on medium that start with
"in todays fast paced business environment.."
the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.
Probably being pedantic, but this is not buying Friendster to be precise, usually what is meant by that is that the company was bought.
In this case the domain Friendster.com was bought, and a trademark was conceded (a new different trademark), I don't know precisely the implications of the trademark though, I think it's a different trademark and you still cannot imply that you are a continuation of the previous trademark holder, it's just that you are given monopoly over that word as a trademark.
Now, is that different than buying "Friendster"? A really interesting legal question, I think it is, and I think it has relevant implications, I don't think you can for example restore the website as it was and pretend a continuation as you would if you bought the company.
Honestly if the prior Friendster company itself was bought - including all the assets, codebase and historical documents (no user details) that would've been such an incredibly interesting read.
Buying the domain and getting the trademark is still cool, just not as cool.
fwiw, I think that subjectively it's roughly equivalent in this specific case. The domain name is a huge part of the brand, and is almost equivalent to the list of prior clients.
I think that it will probably be fine if they compete in the same space of a social network, doesn't look like someone is going to go after them, the company that would have a claim against them is defunct, so even if they have a legal argument, who would raise the case? If the owners do so under their personal name it's even a weaker argument.
So in practice, in this case, subjectively I believe that it's effectively very similar as buying the company.
I thought I was the only one immediately sceptical when I heard domains, without content, bought for multiple thousand dollars just for ad revenue? How does that even work, surely there cannot be lots of legitimate traffic for a site that shut down 10 years ago?
That's not how the term is being used. Six Degrees had all the features we associate with a social network, such as profiles, and the ability to create connections.
app is snappy and solid. missing a “invite friends” link… i know the point is in person, i’m with two people in person but had to go back to app store to find a share link.
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).
Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)
I run an iOS-only app that Serves a small, specific demographic (and is free. It does not generate any revenue). It’s been shipping for a bit over two years, and has just over 1,000 users. I seriously doubt it will ever get more than a couple of thousand (a rounding error, for most folks around here). I did test it with 12,000 users, so it should handle the anticipated load.
I am writing the 2.0 version, now. I think I’ll add the “tap to connect” feature, and probably QR codes, as well.
> I’d like it to eventually pay for itself [...] — but that’s a problem for later.
Hard pass from me dawg. If you don't know the business model now, folks like me are tired of trusting their data to randos on the internet without a plan for sustainability. Guaranteed to end up being just another data farm.
Interesting project. I bought the domain name for a startup I worked for in the early 2000s. It was just there to be bought from the regular registrar process -- no need to bid or pay more than a few $. This article makes me want to do something with it. I don't own the trademark.
These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.
Can you please make it (and keep it) so that friendships are symmetrical? I.e., "friend" rather than "follow". IMO that's the enshittification inflection point of Facebook.
I love the idea generally of creating a social network that's meant to not suck, but the whole tapping phones thing is bad. The major benefit of Instagram, for me, is that it allows me to maintain relationships with people I am unable to physically see for long periods. I don't need social media to stay in touch with people I am physically present with, I need it for bridging distances.
> a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online
my skin crawled. I live a fulfilling, creative life. I'm married, have kids, the whole nine yards. My best friendships are with people I know almost entirely online, or haven't physically seen in years because we live on different continents.
I have little interest in most of the people I see regularly, because we're friends only because our kids are in the same classes.
PLEASE if you are developing only for the Mac ecosystem, you should be required to put (Mac only) in your title so the rest of us don't completely WASTE our time.
> My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it. Websites like that genuinely change the course of people’s lives — people meet, fall in love, build families. That’s incredible to me.
> If Friendster helps even a few people find that kind of connection, it will have been worth it.
Did you tap phones for OkCupid? The type of network you are building does not work that way -- you will not build the same types of connections in-person as you can online. I hope it goes well, but it's not the same type of thing.
judging from what i hear people say. all you have to do is be able to display who's online from your friends list, and a chronologically ordered list of their posts. thats it. the major platforms are optimising for ads so much they cant even achieve this level of basic functionality
Could you make it so you can have group chats but you can invite anyone you’ve tapped before and they can all talk together (but still not be able to talk outside the group chat)
on the fading connection and monetization - you could let people pay to re-up the connection from fading as opposed to meeting in person again first, and its makes them really think about whether meeting in person is worth happening again or would ever happen again, is the connection itself valuable in another way any way
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
> $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue
That's...a good deal? Assuming even 50% margins, that's a solid yield.
Please don't post generic ideological sermons on HN. Sure, any money anyone ever spends or invests could arguably be put to better use. It’s a jerk move to bring it up in a tangential context like this. We have no idea what kind of charitable/benevolent work or giving this person does, or what they may plan to do in the future with any investment gains they make. It's not fair to post this kind of condemnation based on knowing very little about them, and it's against the guidelines to engage in ideological battle or introduce generic tangents.
In a world where I am trying to use my phone much less due to ingress of tracking, destroying my mind etc having a social media where its required is a bit of a no-no for me tbh. Additionally I feel like this puts more friction on those of us that are shy and weird, for us the internet and online places are where we can be ourselves. I wouldn't ask you if I could follow you on Twitter, I'd just do it because I find your stuff interesting. Putting a hurdle in the way of connection might sound daft but is enough for many not to use it or miss-connections.
For me the special sauce that's been taken away from SM is just seeing my friends stuff, I want to see your dog with out it having to be a 2min video with onscreen graphics, SEO keyword optimisation in the post title and brand tags. Show me your fluffy dog updates, just dont force me to ask you about it first.
> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin.
> So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of the domain name friendster.com.
I don't know anything about how to project future ad revenue of a domain, but would this be likely to be valued at only $10,000? Unless I'm misremembering my limits, even if it made $4,500 next year and continued to cut in half every year after that, it would still account for $9,000 of revenue projecting indefinitely into the future, even bumping that up to something like 60% of the previous year's revenue it would already put it at more than $10,000 (although I don't know whether ad revenue tends to scale with inflation or not; my instinct is that the prices of ads probably would roughly increase with inflation over time)?
I know I'm nitpicking a bit about the title, but I can't help but actually be curious now that I thought of this.
[delayed]
You are absolutely right and that jumped out at me. I should also point out the obvious: if people were selling online assets making $9k/year for $9k, there would be a line out the door of people lining up to buy them. If anyone here is selling an asset that makes $X a year for $X, I'll buy it! I make my money back in 12 months and everything else is profit.
So let's value it as it would be valued on, say, Flippa, a decent proxy for "the market." We would look at the monthly revenue: in this case, around $750/mo (which is 9k divided by 12). Then we'd do a multiple of the monthly revenue: 20 is low, 40 is normal. I would actually say 30 here, because this guy created the asset and I would bet he did it well and it's not junk. So let's say it's worth $22.5k.
So I think it would be more accurate to say, "I purchased the site in a deal through assets valued at about $42k, total."
[edit: updated the comment as I got confused about the thing being exchanged - it's a site the guy created that he transferred to make the sale]
Yeah, but you have to scale the projections for uncertainty about the future, and exaggeration by the seller.
In particular, if someone on the internet tells me they’re making $x a month from spammy ads on a squatted domain, I immediately discount the claim substantially due to bullshit. I increase the discount rate if the person making the claim is trying to sell me said domain.
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If you had a steady investment opportunity with 10% return (about in line with long-terms stock market returns), $9000 per year indefinitely is worth the same as $99000 now (in an idealized finance world. In the real world you can't invest $99000 and withdraw $9000 per year because withdrawals during downturns will take out too much. But it's a quick way to calculate equivalent values).
That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)
Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford
Good analysis. if I was the author I would have just borrowed 20k in a personal loan and paid it off in three years. Of course he may be exaggerating that he gets 9K in Ad revenue per year or he knows that it's going to decline
What's the best network currently to put a domain to generate ad revenue?
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I imagine that $9k ad revenue is a site that had an actual user base. And that the guy taking over the domain is going to just put all ads and no content, like he had on Friendster.com. And if so, the expected ad income is probably much lower.
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Nobody gets 10% a year
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From what I can tell, The upper bound on price for any site making less than 100k a month is 24 months of revenue, but the more common is around 12 months.
The buyer takes on substantial risk because it's easy to fake the numbers, and google updates can tank the site at any time.
Also, most sites will require maintenance/upkeep to keep earning, or they can tank quick. Even if they have got evergreen content, without updates google might drop their search ranking.
I see it more as 20-40 on Flippa. Where are you seeing 12x monthly revenue sales?
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You can check out similar sales on flippa.com - ad revenue does not last forever, even if it’s existed for years. And revenue is very much not profit, you could create a site and get $100/day in ad revenue tomorrow but it would cost you $200 in ad spend.
What does the spend go to, besides hosting costs?
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If Friendster.com was making around $9,000 per year, this would explain why paying $30k + domains returning a similar amount would make sense?
The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.
Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site
If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.
See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"
I think the tapping phones feature -- for initial friend creation, not upkeep -- is THE killer feature of the app.
Do I want my teens on any social media apps? No.
Would I let them be on Facebook of 2006, when you were just connected to your friends and family, and not influencers and "the algorithm?" Sure! That and early Instagram were great ways to keep up with real-life friends.
If you made this as easy and pleasant to scroll through as 2011 Instagram was, with only-real friends allowed, I might even return to social media myself. It would beat having to WhatsApp my family my vacation photos.
(And heck, if this got big enough that celebrities were bumping phones with fans, heck, at least that's a more intentional connection than Insta forcing the latest wellness guru on my teen girl.)
It also doubles as a way to verify that someone is a real person using their real identity, which is starting to become pretty important these days. If Alice and Bob are both on this platform, the confidence Alice can have in the proposition "the Bob account is really controlled by a guy named Bob who really knows some people I know, as opposed to being AI or an overseas scammer" would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them. That sounds useful.
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My thoughts as well, I love this!
Easy to do, easy to implement but hard to bypass. Also it tells me something about the network that is not vying for a slice of the attention economy and isn't going to do everything it can to keep me on the site.
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> The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing
Optimizing for time spent on the platform is exactly what results in the current social platforms. The idea that the platform itself should be appealing and not a tool to connect with each others is in itself toxic IMHO
You're right. I don't think I could continue living if one of my friends died and a I could no longer view their social media profile on a site designed to foster in person connections. I really can't think many things worse than this.
You are saying you would kill yourself if you could not see you dead friend on some app? On the contrary it should be easy for a relative to remove a deceased individual from social media, especially so that they are not captured to be zombie-bots liking some far-right posts years they have been gone. Meta doesn’t give a shit about this, but tapping phones would actually solve this problem by itself. If you are not online nor tap phones with anyone for say a year, your account dissappears.
If that happens, just steal their phone and keep tapping it monthly. It's what they would have wanted.
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I think you meant this snark for reddit?
I have a heap of family and friends who live in a different country to me. I'd love an old school Friendster / early Facebook-style social medium where we could share posts, but the tapping mechanic makes this impractical for me.
Maybe pay them a visit.
As others have mentioned, “Bump!” did it 15 years ago and it was little more than a novelty, despite its Google acquisition. iOS has also had the tapping-phones-to-connect feature baked in for years (NameDrop) and no one uses it. Curious how that OS-level functionality might conflict with the app-level bumping. That aside, w all respect to the poster, it strikes me that they took that comment and ran with it before doing any research. There’s definitely a better solution to the problem, and I hope they find it.
Perhaps "remember when you met with your friends?"
But taking a photo (possibly a group photo) is a more natural way to do that. Maybe it should integrate with photo-taking somehow?
It would be annoying if you met up, forgot to do the ritual in person, and had no way to fix it.
While this probably could only be done with the cooperation of Apple/Google, something like what they did for contact tracing during the pandemic would be ideal. Picking up that you were in the proximity of various friends without any active effort.
https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing
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I don't really like the idea of an app telling me how to manage my friendships, my view is that people can handle their relationships without intervention. I'm not sure what problem it is trying to solve.
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It’s interesting to read the comments here. People seem to be either strongly for, or strongly against this tapping feature. I bet the split correlates to whether all your friends live in the same town as you.
For me, I already know what the handful of people who live in my little town are doing. I see them all the time. An app like this is for keeping up for the rest of my friends who live out of town and I might only see in person every few years.
> 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore
That 'tapping phones' could also be used to facilitate key exchange verification, making that chore technically useful.
Then again, that would be better done in an open-source app and not tied to any particular domain.
Actually I met people on Facebook and other websites and after that I met them in real life.
The tapping phones feature wouldn't allow me to do this.
How does it work? Bluetooth?
> I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.
People just shouldn't look to the online digital world for connection with dead loved ones. It's entirely impractical and one day after a bankruptcy or when it's no longer profitable it may just disappear. It can take years or weeks.
Much bullying potential. "You're dead to us" ...
I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook, and at that point I stopped scrolling the results.
For a moment I thought maybe the app was US exclusive or something and not available in my region.
But following the link from the post worked fine and I could install it.
I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
Anyway, installed the app finally thanks to the link.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/friendster/id6760240416
When a new app is released, it takes a few days for it to get into search, for some reason. Pretty much every single time a new app releases I see a comment like this. Nothing malicious you just have to wait a bit.
> Nothing malicious
The first result is a sponsored result, and even after Friendster is indexed, if they don't pay apple's extortion-rate, the first result will still be for some other social media app.
Ads in the app store are malicious. There are people who have searched "Ledger bitcoin wallet", clicked the first link (a malicious app who paid apple enough money to be 'sponsored' for that search), and had all their money stolen.
Agreed.
You can search apps by their exact name, identifier, anything, and App Store will not find them for day+.
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Odd, Friendster was the first non-sponsored result for me in the U.S. store.
> You’d have to be specifically watching the domain friendster.com at the right time to find and participate in the auction, or you’d have to actively watch gname.com daily to see this auction.
You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
> You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
I looked into this a while ago and I'm pretty sure that there are hundreds of these services and even ones you can host yourself. No idea how well they work though.
A domain being for sale can mean a lot of things. Here it meant it was auctioned on a very specific website
> You're telling me there's no "notify me when domain X becomes for sale" service?
I guess in today's age you would just schedule an agent to check the website every day.
Geez who did you offend? Half your comments are dead for no obvious reason I can tell. Vouched for you but you may want to reach out to @dang.
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Wouldn't that be rather inefficient, from a resource perspective?
> the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.
Isn’t it insane that Apple refuses for an app to be listed on the App Store if it is intended to be niche? If true that’s pretty shocking
Here's what I would do.
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
Cool project. Have fun!
> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a quarter of the time, and PWA about 10% of the time. That’s across all users, including desktop, so the PWA actually had an unfair advantage.
People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs, especially for social media.
If somebody wouldn't even bother to download an app for a social network they probably wouldn't stick around for very long either
What about the opposite situation? I'm not installing an app without first having taken a look at what the network has to offer.
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That’s empirically wrong. All statistics say that people do install apps way more than PWA
Nobody wants to install an app?
I always avoid apps if I can.
But yeah, that comment is a bit disconnected to majority of the population.
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lol I was going to say this too! I think the inverse is true: nobody wants to install a PWA
People say PWAs are good as apps now and feels like an app now, personally as ab armchair nobody I doubt the retention rate actually compare, even if the app was literally just a plain WebView.
We’re not normies, so take that with a grain of salt. Here’s mine: apps have access to significantly expanded capabilities which has privacy implications. If I can use the browser for a given app, I do it. Amazon for example.
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Personally I'll only install FOSS apps on my phone and I go out of my way to actively discourage (to varying degrees of success) my relatives from installing arbitrary junk that they surely don't need on their phones.
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Yeah that’s a weird comment. I don’t want a PWA. I want a normal app. Users want apps.
I have a handful of 3rd party apps on my phone and none on my computer. Prefer to just use browser.
If it requires Play Store, I will only put it on my work phone.
After a quick search, there is an NFC web API, but with no general support https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_NFC_API
> 1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
Misses the point completely. The entire idea is that this enforces in-person meetings, which QR codes do not.
You could make the qr code extremely short lived, like 2 seconds or so.
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This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends.
I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a friend so they can take a photo and then download it, and immediately connect us, would be huge.
Do you have any kind of development plan for new features?
I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing.
What I was describing is a way to quickly onboard a friend who I want to friend, because chances are zero of my friends will have this app yet.
If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.
> allow Bluetooth
I'd have a hard time getting over my aversion to this. I automatically reject any app's attempt to find local devices, etc.
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This reminds me of the (also defunct) Bump app.
https://blog.bu.mp/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
Wow, the phone tap requirement, love it! And your ethics, the best part.
Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):
Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)
Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.
Thank you for keeping it not evil!
Let's not praise a professional domain squatter for his ethics. I don't understand how this guy isn't getting laughed out of the room?
It’s almost unfair for me to say this, still registered on Meta properties… even need them for work… uhg!!! Zuck pls retire to do philanthropy & hire OP
> Fading connections. If two friends go a full year without tapping phones, the link between them softens. Not a punishment — a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online.
I have this guy whom I used to be in touch with but now we meet every seven years randomly - happened two times already in completely different places and we're due for a meeting this year.
I would rather maintain this connection, because it's always fascinating to catch up after years.
> All of this is built around the simple idea that real friendships happen when you actually meet in person.
I understand the sentiment - but this would make it useless for my closest friends - we live in different cities and countries now - and it would take years to fill in the social graph. We would all have to travel and meet everyone else.
I suppose this is alleviated by the talk to a friend of a friend feature - but does sound like it partially excludes friends with limited mobility.
I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant now. Same with other celebrities, like Kim Kardashian. If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
If you want a business model, require payment for long-term subscriptions or large celebrity/news accounts, but you have to overcome the network effect first. Maybe have a dozen or so permanent connections to start with, like MySpace's 8 priority friends.
I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
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Facebook has that feature and has for many years. That is a good idea, but there are many bad ideas that negate the good ideas even when the good ones are implemented.
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i think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit
opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform
they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
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It's a great idea in principle, but it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with.
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Apparently Facebook does/did support posting to certain groups? Maybe the UI isn't great as I never knew it was possible but a workmate told it was.
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WeChat in China was early to implement friend group-based posting
> Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen.
Facebook now has 'Audience', which is quite analogous to 'Circles'
What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.
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Circles was a lot of busy work though
Messages group chats are the circles now.
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I can only imagine someone looking over my shoulder on vacation to see what I'm posting: "oh, you have a 'close friends' group; why am I not in it?"
Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
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> If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
This is a weird comment because it treats connections like they're only an asset for the person being followed.
The people doing the following aren't even considered. They're supposed to continuously re-follow the people they want to follow?
I don't see any upsides to this for anyone. I'm not reading social media every day. I don't want the network to automatically expire my follows and force me to remember and re-discover who I want to follow all the time. I don't want the people I follow feeling like they desperately need to pursue relevance instead of just being themselves.
If Selena Gomez is "socially irrelevant" then why do you care that she has 400 million followers? What does this take away from you in any way?
Because I don't want to see all her posts on my timeline anymore. I have to actively unfollow her to do that, which is more work.
That's more work than even following someone, because it asks for confirmation or pops up a separate modal to unfollow, which it doesn't do for following someone. And so I don't even bother.
This leads to stale social networks and algorithmic timelines.
>keeping the overall network fresh and relevant
What does this mean? Like in practical feature terms and benefit to the end user?
Your system kills the social networks ability to act as someone's modern day rolodex of contact information of previous acquaintances. What do they get in exchange for that?
Social networks aren't rolodexes. They're newspapers.
Wait Kim and Selena are irrelevant? I guess I'm not keeping up with the times
Yeah that was the most out of touch HN comment I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Persistent irrelevant celebrities are a real thing, but those two wouldn’t crack the top 500.
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I honestly can't imagine a stronger indicator of somewhere I don't want to be than it having 400m Kim Kardashian fans
As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree.
An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.
real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its first season putting the pathologies of social technologies on display that record everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
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Nah, bad idea. The timeframe of an active connection really varies by age and type. Some important connections are once-every-few-years communications. A year, or two years, etc is too arbitrary.
For example, I know a gal who foolishly invited her whole friend list to her 26th birthday party.
Did that weird guy from 3rd grade show up? He sure did.
That… actually seems kinda fun…
I know this wasn’t the point I was supposed to take from your comment but I’m liking this idea
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I am confused... what is harmed by having stale connections? Why would connections be used as an editorial filter?
Because you don't want to see posts from stale connections.
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I would hate it if the system removed nodes from my network without my influence. Perhaps a rules engine with user defined criteria would be useful.
Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it.
400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez relevant” and it responded with essentially “more in 2026 than ever.”
Could potentially show you withering connections you havent interacted with, almost an auto recycle bin with the option to dig on there and bring it back later on but dissapear from your main radius of attention if withered.
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Don't worry, Facebook already has Fading Connections
You can be married to each other and your posts won't show up on the other person's feed (there's a post on HN about this)
Xitter was kind of doing the same thing: I can’t see anything my mom posts, but I definitely have to see everything Elon’s mom does.
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I don’t post on Facebook—HN is my closest analogue. But I assure you my partner(s) have no interest in seeing whatever I post here. Any more than I want to be in the thick of the extended-family group chats. Or, frankly, Facebook.
In that sense, maybe this is Facebook doing its part for domestic harmony…
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Yup, it's annoying as all hell.
What in the world lol
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Followers is a somewhat meaningless metric. Instead look at something like likes or views. The most relevant posts will spread via the algorithm and get the most views.
i understand the intent, but selena is still extremely popular, especially amongst women...maybe a bad example
A comically atrocious take.
Can you please not post shallow dismissals or call names in HN comments? We're trying for something else here.
You're of course welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Any chance of making the code open source? Would love to contribute to this and build more features needed. It’s an absolute bliss to see such a clean UI and no nonsense. I think you should consider that. Thanks for building this
Good article but sorry but it should not be normalized that you have to have an iPhone to join a social network. Something clearly wrong there.
> So I created an iOS app for Friendster, and I made it so that in order to connect with someone as a friend, you have to actually tap phones together in real life.
And thus ensured your social network won't have 72% of the world on it... And locally for anyone outside the USA, a far higher percentage.
Too bad Apple wouldn't allow the registration requiring the tapping - it would have been cool if whole social network was a tree with a single root - the founder.
Ofc it's probably for the better if it's to have a chance to spread at least a little.
> this failed Apple App Store review because of Guideline 4.2 — Design — Minimum Functionality. They said “the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.”
This is why we need laws regulating mobile platforms. Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you use your phone for, or what apps you can give to your users. Doesn't work that way for PCs, shouldn't work that way for computers in your pocket.
Not trying to defend App Store policies, but writing this just for those who are struggling with Guideline 4.2 trying to publish an app that is only intended for a small group of users. There is a less well-known option called "unlisted app distribution", similar to unlisted YouTube videos: the app is public and can be downloaded using the direct link, but it cannot be found in App Store search. The "small, or niche, set of users" guideline normally does not apply for such apps.
To request unlisted distribution for your app, send it for review as usual, then file a special form [1], and mention that in the review notes.
Source: I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school. Its audience is, indeed, not of Apple scale: the school parents living nearby. Apple refused it as 4.2 and only agreed to publish it as unlisted, which I was okay with, because sharing the link between the parents was not a big deal. Google had no problems with publishing the Android app normally though.
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/support/unlisted-app-distributio...
> I struggled with Guideline 4.2 when I tried to publish an app showing the bell schedule and other local information for the neighborhood school.
Why would you not just make this a webpage, and then the users could add it to home page as if it were an app? no Apple review necessary then. What does it being an app give you besides bureaucratic headaches?
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I often get in trouble on HN for being more sympathetic than most towards Apple. But that reasoning by Apple is ridiculous. They allow apps which only function if you buy a specific $100k+ EV, or some niche audiophile amp. Usefulness doesn’t get much more limited than that.
What even is the idea, what would be the value in weeding out niche apps, if they did it consistently? To reduce the work involved in keeping everything in the garden lovely?
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I don’t believe that the government should police what types of computers I can build. I occasionally tinker with hardware myself and have been thinking up ways to build a smartphone differently. If I want to make the device so that it only interoperates with a certain class of items, I would rather build nothing at all than be forced by the government to interop with everything, which is also a costly thing to develop.
I get it that people want more freedom from their iPhones but the thing about consumer devices is that they are an expression of a certain philosophy of how computers should work. Being a walled garden is one such approach. If you don’t agree with how a device operates on principle, you should not buy it—there’s Android or derivatives. You’re also likely to be a power user who’s in an incredible small minority because iPhone sales keep getting better every year and the walled garden approach has market (as in free market) validation.
Now, if your objective is to regulate monopolies, I think that the policing should happen in the supply chain and production side instead of the consumer software side. You don’t have more options than iPhone and Android because big players like Apple and Samsung have captured manufacturing facilities with long-term exclusivity contracts, making innovation in the space prohibitively expensive. But the law shouldn’t dictate what sort of computer innovators are allowed to build.
>I don’t believe that the government should police what types of computers I can build.
They already do, one of the reasons it's so hard to make a smartphone is all the FCC regulations on radios.
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It’s uncomfortable to agree because I think companies should decide what they do and don’t allow in the ecosystems they own. But once an ecosystem becomes so pervasive & necessary, I think control must be turned over to the people.
That rule reminds me of Raya. Isn't the whole idea of that service (which is only available on iOS, I think) that it's only intended for a small group of users, who've been invited?
It's for rich people though, different rules apply when you're well-connected.
Wording can go a long way - calling it early access, and saying invitations will allow you to invite your friends as the platform opens up can paint a similar picture in a different way.
You know that websites are a thing, and you can visit them from your phone?
Apple also shouldn't force you to use Safari if you install Chrome on iOS, but so far the DOJ hasn't followed through with the antitrust lawsuit started under the previous administration. I guess gold participation trophies are enough to work around lawsuits depending on who is in charge.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
[flagged]
They dictate the capabilities that their device is offered and how the device is designed. It is up to the consumer to decide if that is worth the price of the device.
This argument falls apart since there is no real freedom of choice, and the importance of smartphones in our lives.
People are becoming more aware that they don’t want a corporation in control over this essential near ubiquitous technology.
I see no good reason to follow a “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want” mindset
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You are correct and I don't get OP's point. Don't want apple rules, don't use apple products. They are the business, they can do what they want with it, right?
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I don't think that's the way to look at it.
There are standards for interoperability and user-friendliness with all kinds of devices, and we should expect the same from modern devices.
It would have been pretty peculiar and unacceptable if your telephone in the 80s couldn't call your neighbour because the telephone company just decided to not make them interoperable, why shouldn't it be the same here?
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This is true of 98% of regulations.
(The only exceptions are government-granted monopolies.)
Have you heard of Android? Graphene OS? You do have freedom of choice here
Not for long if Google has any say about it. Hardware remote attestation is here, and it's the number one threat to mobile computing freedom.
The future is one where everyone can, theoretically, install anything they want, but they get banned from everything should they actually do so. Rooted system? Attestation fails. "Oh no, looks like someone tampered with the system". Can't access your bank account. Can't communicate via WhatsApp. Can't watch something on the streaming services. Can't even play video games.
Discrimination against "untrustworthy" devices, where "untrustworthy" means not corporate owned. Leading to complete ostracization.
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That would immediately exclude 124 million Americans. Freedom of choice would be giving us the same choice we already have on PCs. We shouldn't keep allowing the mobile duopoly to control this vital and ubiquitous resource for their profit at our expense.
I can run Android on Apple hardware? I have freedom to purchase. There is no choice.
Unless you want third party WebViews... (on normal Android)
(Technically besides the point, but that is a broad statement)
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You can still install this just not through a public listing on the app store. Apple provides various solutions for different audiences.
Apple provides various obstacles for different reasons.
I believe a cool initiative would be to create a mastodon instance with the domain
A dream I had last night was for a social network based on the deep but brief conversations we have in park benches, club toilets, hospital waiting rooms. Where we are totally open somewhat vulnerable but free from commitments. Think about the first conversation you have had with a friend, often it's the most revealing or deep one you may have.
Somewhat anonymous, short in time, one to one, with the potential to connect afterwards on outside channels. Possibly only one conversation a day allowed, and possibly only available to pre set contacts.
The previous owner bought it for $8000 (quite less for domains like this) but here is the catch. This domain has a bad reputation and a lot of negativity since it has a long history.
Those who are in domain name business knows that because it affects the value of every expired/operational domain.
Nice. Quick hypoyhetical. Meta offers $1bn in 5 years time when you have 2m users. Will you sell?
If so this is a meta-or-dead social network.
Making it federated etc. would make me trust it more.
Anyone will sell any project for $1bn, absurd take.
Craigslist never sold afaik, theres loads of other example companies worth more than a billion now that never sold. Depends how you define "project" of course, but you gotta make sure you don't define it such that this would no longer be a "project" when it's worth 1bn. Also everything that sells for more than 1bn is something that presumably nobody would sell for 1bn.
The idea that anyone would sell any project for 1bn is kinda nonsense, if a project looks worth buying for 1bn to someone, it may look to be worth keeping to the people who made it or are in control of it.
I'd probably sell any project of mine for $1m, I'm very cheap.
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That is literally their point.
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Incorrect.
If that's your standard, you basically can't interact with any entity other than megacorps, which you obviously disdain.
What is the benefit of that perspective? It's just social media. If it goes away tomorrow, no real loss. Use it accordingly.
It is good to point out this alternative is 90% likely going to be a rugpull on "nice cosy 90s style social network" by systemic factors. Regardless of the intent of the owner.
I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.
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I mean.. yeah. That's why no "Facebook like 2007" social networks have happened since. It would have to be run by someone with a lot of built up trust in order for people to trust it in the way that people did with Facebook. The world has been burnt.
If say, Valve started a social network I would consider using it because they've had decades to screw up Steam and they haven't. It is a bit outside their wheelhouse though.
This random guy though?
Tapping phones seems very limiting. I don’t see most of my friends in person that often, different cities etc.
I think a better alternative would be a phone number.
You only give your number to friends, which aligns with the brand and product concept.
Allows more of your friends to join via your address book, good for the app growth.
Might also mean indirectly you can’t follow a non-personal page which also aligns to the brand and product concept.
I agree. There should be a hierarchy of intimacy, as it were, in order to initiate a friendship.
* Tapping Phones * Confirming Phone Number * Confirming Email * Connected via Other Platforms (Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, etc)
As far as maintaining a friendship by tapping phones, again, I would make the friendships a constant and graph / rank intimacy by how often you tap phones as well as how connected you are to your friend (phone, email, connections on other networks).
I love the idea of hierarchy of intimacy, that is a great concept/phrase.
I'd make it so you could tap a phone, you know their phone number, you know their email. Importantly in my eyes, you shouldn't be able to navigate to a profile and just ask to connect as that'd mean you could do that to people you don't actually know (whereby knowing is inferred by you knowing some amount of their personal info such as tap, phone, email).
I'd stay away from your last option of 'other platforms', per my other reply below in that those platforms allow you to connect to anyone/anything. There is nothing in them that say this connection is inherently personal vs being generic.
I hate phone numbers and hate given them out and I hate that I'm required to even have on in 2026. I'm reachable without one. The majority of my friends do not know my phone number. Only the really old ones from back before messaging apps with free calling
In my head, the new Friendster owner wants to drive some amount of true personal connection - hence the tapping.
The problem I see with not using a phone number as I described, is that you'd be connecting to any old social profile - could be Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
None of those are inherently personal, it'd open up Friendster to be not materially different to any other social network as those networks don't have the concept of a personal connection - they are just generic connections (some are personal, many/most are not).
I attended a concert last night and was wishing for this exact kind of app, being able to quickly exchange a follow with someone you just met in real life but will otherwise never see again unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward. Could spawn some special relationships.
> unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward
How is this any less awkward? "Oh do you have the new Friendster app?" "Friendster? Isn't that from the 1900s?" "No, the new Friendster, see you download it, register, then we bump phones...."
Maybe just because I'm an autistic introvert, but the idea of asking someone to exchange numbers is terrifying enough, but at least this is an almost universal social ritual that people understand implicitly. I ask if you want to keep in touch and exchange phone numbers. I do not need to explain literally anything else and the other person almost always knows what I mean, how to do it, and what thin social relationship that implies. And if they don't seem to understand or are hesitant, but are otherwise coherent and cogent, I take the message that they don't want to keep in touch.
Now add a new app to download (iPhone only), a new social network to register, a new social ritual... Are they being hesitant because this is a new app or because they don't actually want to keep in touch? No thanks.
I love that you're looking to "spawn some special relationships" but are unwilling to ask for a name/number. There's no app in the world that will stop you from "wishing" you took action in getting some girls number.
"Add me on Line/Insta," display your QR code or scan theirs, fire off your first message "Daft Punk Concert" so you remember how you met.
If you meet someone this often to touch your phones, why do you even need to have an app to talk to that person? The beauty of social apps is that I can talk to someone who I can’t physically meet that often
When you're building a social networking site like this, when do you need to start to worry about laws from different states and countries (eg age bans, data export, etc)?
I mean, it's good to be aware from the beginning, even if you don't intend to follow them right away.
But, my rule of thumb is you don't really need to worry about laws from places where they don't have real jurisdiction on you. If they filed suit, would you rather respond or make a note to never visit that place / would you be ok if all your users from there were blocked from contacting you by law?
As a guy who used to run game servers[0] and some other small-web stuff, I hate that this is one of the first questions that springs to mind today, but I'd also like to know.
[0]: in ancient times when server meant an actual server
TIL ppl have domains that make $9k/yr and here i am being happy my niche app is bringing me $200/mo revenue
We can't seem to be able to login from the website, it requires an Apple account? The UI might not be showing up properly.
It’s app-only, right?
iOS only unfortunately. Big shame.
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This is crazy, but unfortunately I don't have an iPhone otherwise I'd totally sign up.
The only thing I liked when I did use Facebook was the "wall". To be able to post on a friend's wall semi- publically where their friends can see it. Most other Facebook clones have had the idea of tagging, but it wasn't the same. (E.g. Google+)
Does the new owner of the domain friendster.com also own the company, the patents and the other pieces of intellectual property? The article seemed to be unclear about this.
Why no android app?
I plan to make one in the future. It's just me
Would love to take a crack on this on Android
Why no website as well? Can't use it from a laptop, it's a bit strange for a social media, many don't like typing on a phone.
That's a great question, since the genesis of this was the domain name, which no one using the app will care about or visit. That is, the only thing that was actually needed here was the trademark, it appears.
Especially odd considering that Friendster began at a time when social media on phones was unheard of.
I remember when we considered a website that tells the user to download an app an anti-pattern (e.g. earlier versions of iMusic).
why not a proper Progress Web App so it can run on any device independent of app stores? it's not as though a social app needs deep OS integration. I'm sure Claude or Codex could vibe code that in an afternoon.
The central point of this app is to determine proximity of two devices. That's not possible today in a cross-platform way using web apps.
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The main functionality to add friends is that you need to use the phones physically touching feature of iPhones. This doesn't exist in Android afaik.
The guy wants people to meet in person rather than doing social media the normie way.
Android has QuickShare which can be leveraged.
For the record, the feature you describe was first introduced on Samsung phones 14 years ago - and later removed, likely after poor adoption. Because Apple "reinvented it", it's now planned to be reintroduced on Android too.
https://developers.google.com/nearby no?
Clearly targeted towards a US only audience I guess?
Even in the US... something like half of people have an android.
Starting a network effect product like a social network where you exclude half the social graph seems like... quite a decision.
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I have sliver of idea for social media based on curiosity and knowledge tidbits.
Each user gives itself some field of interest, maybe its makeup, maybe its molecular biology, maybe it's something else. Then the system finds similar people with same interests. There are no subreddits with abusive moderators, no rigid containers. Just that you get content you are interested in based on genuine people. Then you can like talk to them about these things or see them posting about the stuff
and you get separate feeds for each kind of stuff,probably ai categorization
I really like the idea of a “facebook before it got bad “, with just people you actually know posting about what they’re up to.
But the “tap phones” thing wouldn’t work for me.
Most of my friends and family live halfway around the world from me. I visit the states every couple years, and make a point of seeing them when I can, but the reality is I live here and they live there (a dozen different theres in half a dozen countries)
Those are the people I want an app like this to keep up with. But they’re the people your app won’t even let me add as friends.
I worked with the guy that created Friendster! IIRC he made it back in ‘06/‘07 and I had one of the first test accounts. Chill dude, really smart.
Had to be even earlier than that, I graduated college in 2006 and I’m pretty sure someone turned me on to Friendster at least a couple years before.
“My wife and I met on okcupid”
… 11 years going for me. Good on you. I don’t have any other social media accounts. I’ll do my best to join up on this one. Wholesome.
What does "a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue" look like? Is this domain one where people randomly stumble upon it and give ad views to a parking page? A website with regular use or other content that people visit for some purpose that is now under different ownership?
Probably a parked domain with ads that people stumble across. We used to call these guys cybersquatters.
They're still called cybersquatters, except for some unknown reason ICANN has decided to not actually do anything about them. :(
I remember Friendster being very popular in parts of Latin America / Brazil and Philippines. I think you could definitely get a lot of users through the nostalgia factor.
What if somebody's phone is of an alternative type, like a flip phone, and they can't install the app needed to tap phones? Then how will they become friends with another
Or they just don't want to install another goddamn app.
This seems really cool for people whose friend networks are physically located in the same place they are.
That's not me, and hasn't been for probably 20 years.
But it's a neat idea regardless.
This is quite amazing. I remember being on the original friendster way back in the day. They had so much potential. And there was also orkut.com that was even better because of the simpler UX. Then came Facebook and you all know the rest.
I love the internet.
This sounds cool and similar to something I’ve been building! I say similar as we have different ideas and target audiences — What I’m building is a niche network specifically targeting people who are travellers or friends that like holidaying together. I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming or self promoting so will keep the link out but will share if people want.
Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.
I'm imagining one of those tiny libraries with a garden gnome in it with a cheap phone inside, connected to a garden gnome Friendster account.
And then it gets stolen and has a trip around the world, meeting new people.
I have the highest hopes for this. At the same time, I can’t help but be skeptical of the claims for no ads / no data selling lasting -forever-.
Build the platform, then find out how to make money on it later.
Who visits those long expired domains to generate ad revenue? People nostalgic? People who hear this Friendster thing and want to check out what they are doing now?
Right? And who clicks the popups? I have no clue about the economics of online ads, but my understanding is, it is cents per click. This would mean hundreds of thousands visits per year? Sounds like there are bots involved to me.
There are loads of dead links hovering around on the internet, no doubt plenty of people (and bots convincing enough that advertisers still pay out) will accidentally end up on one of these domains, sigh at the annoying ad that interrupted what they were doing, and never return.
The real social network has become WhatsApp - lots of small private groups with nothing in them but messages from people in the group.
I don't use WhatsApp, but I've noticed a similar trend more generally. I've got several Matrix group chats with friends and family I regularly post in, a handful of small to medium IRC channels with internet friends I've talked to for years, etc. It feels like Twitter and Instagram and so on are a lot less personal now, just curated posts based on the algorithm, and lots of people who've decided they're comedians. I even will link an interesting post from a social media site in a group chat pretty often, but don't interact with the people from that chat on social media platforms themselves.
I just made a similar idea focused on games only with people next to you, https://lorehex.co/ can you reach out to me and we can connect? my website and contact info at jperla.com
> The DNS records for lorehex.co are not properly configured. Please check your DNS settings.
That's so cool. I would have expected for the domain to go for hundreds of thousands or millions, or, more likely, not not be purchasable for some reason. I can see a future where google.com is purchased for fun by some robot in 200 years.
>I don’t really care about making money from [$project], but I’d like it to eventually pay for itself.
Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).
"no ads" - it is explicitly stated on the website and app store page
Just a thought: you could incorporate a non-profit to run the site, like Wikipedia or public radio/media, and be the president of that organization. For me, donating to a non-profit is much easier than a voluntary subscription to a for-profit corporation.
Love the app, I’ve already had some photos shared with me!
Facebook also didn't have ads when it started
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I was going to complain about being the first given that I never used it, but indeed, Hi5 and My Space came an year later.
Forcing phone tab to add friend is genius kills boots and fake account instantly every social network dies due to fake connections.
The tapping phones thing really limits the utility of this, and I suspect gives away something about the age of the author - as one gets older, friends move away from the place where you originally made friends, often all over the world. Given I'm not allowed to connect with most of my friends via friendster, there doesn't seem to be much point in creating an account.
It would be cool to leverage this proximity requirement to build a GnuPG web of trust. The one year 'weakening' would also help keep the web strong.
Have you spent much time thinking about how the feed will work? Balancing the “quality” and enjoyment with the prioritization of “people you met in person”. I’m sure I’m far from the only one who misses the old Facebook feed, but curious what a modern take on that would look like.
We don’t need another company to hold our data and then change its mind later for the correct price.
Make the social network private, end to end encrypted, not harvested by your servers
Off topic, kind of, but this was genuine and genuinely nice to read.
I have to ask, what is the difference between this and private WhatsApp groups?
The tap-to-connect constraint makes this work. Every social network removes friction; this one keeps it on purpose. Won't scale to billions, but maybe that's the point.
I visit the side but I don't have handphone so it seems like I get DQ-ed immediately. If the apps works on web will be nice.
hmm, I have no iphone.
Bought Friendster, posted about it on Medium. Can't wait for the Justin.tv live stream!
lmao i cannot stand medium. the amount of articles i've clicked into on medium that start with
"in todays fast paced business environment.."
the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.
makes things like https://beej.us/guide/ an absolute treasure
Related: Friendster Relaunch (28 points, 3 days ago, 14 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44053119
(The one from 3 days ago never made the frontpage so we won't treat it as a dupe)
This will be the ONLY social media my kids are allowed to use.
I haven't tried it but meeting functionality for smaller groups would be good, specially for different kinds of hobby meetups.
Sounds like a good usecase for WebNFC.
Probably being pedantic, but this is not buying Friendster to be precise, usually what is meant by that is that the company was bought.
In this case the domain Friendster.com was bought, and a trademark was conceded (a new different trademark), I don't know precisely the implications of the trademark though, I think it's a different trademark and you still cannot imply that you are a continuation of the previous trademark holder, it's just that you are given monopoly over that word as a trademark.
Now, is that different than buying "Friendster"? A really interesting legal question, I think it is, and I think it has relevant implications, I don't think you can for example restore the website as it was and pretend a continuation as you would if you bought the company.
I think the distinction is warranted.
Honestly if the prior Friendster company itself was bought - including all the assets, codebase and historical documents (no user details) that would've been such an incredibly interesting read.
Buying the domain and getting the trademark is still cool, just not as cool.
fwiw, I think that subjectively it's roughly equivalent in this specific case. The domain name is a huge part of the brand, and is almost equivalent to the list of prior clients.
I think that it will probably be fine if they compete in the same space of a social network, doesn't look like someone is going to go after them, the company that would have a claim against them is defunct, so even if they have a legal argument, who would raise the case? If the owners do so under their personal name it's even a weaker argument.
So in practice, in this case, subjectively I believe that it's effectively very similar as buying the company.
I had this exact app idea back in 2019, but never got around to building it. Nice work!
Love it!!! Businesses that have genuine passion like these are the ones that really blow up…or die :-)
Well, this sounds sketchy as hell. Pass.
I thought I was the only one immediately sceptical when I heard domains, without content, bought for multiple thousand dollars just for ad revenue? How does that even work, surely there cannot be lots of legitimate traffic for a site that shut down 10 years ago?
> Friendster was the first social network
Friendster was not the first social network.
sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.
AOL has them beat by another 5. You need to go back to ARPA to find the first one. Social networks are just networks with humans at each end.
That's not how the term is being used. Six Degrees had all the features we associate with a social network, such as profiles, and the ability to create connections.
Also LiveJournal, launched in 1999.
+1 for an android app
app is snappy and solid. missing a “invite friends” link… i know the point is in person, i’m with two people in person but had to go back to app store to find a share link.
Thanks, good feedback
I think this might be as simple as a QR Code I can show to my friends!
i bought friendster for 30k, heres what it taught me about b2b sales
This is an awesome idea!
Hi, congrats on the launch!
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).
Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)
The plot of Anaconda 2025, but Friendster.
Good luck with this.
I run an iOS-only app that Serves a small, specific demographic (and is free. It does not generate any revenue). It’s been shipping for a bit over two years, and has just over 1,000 users. I seriously doubt it will ever get more than a couple of thousand (a rounding error, for most folks around here). I did test it with 12,000 users, so it should handle the anticipated load.
I am writing the 2.0 version, now. I think I’ll add the “tap to connect” feature, and probably QR codes, as well.
Wow. Yes. Thank you!
> I’d like it to eventually pay for itself [...] — but that’s a problem for later.
Hard pass from me dawg. If you don't know the business model now, folks like me are tired of trusting their data to randos on the internet without a plan for sustainability. Guaranteed to end up being just another data farm.
Neat you got the domain tho.
>Why I’m doing this
>My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it.
But OkCupid didn't require people to tap their phones together in order to be able to chat in the app.
Interesting project. I bought the domain name for a startup I worked for in the early 2000s. It was just there to be bought from the regular registrar process -- no need to bid or pay more than a few $. This article makes me want to do something with it. I don't own the trademark.
Do we actually need social networks?
These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.
Plus it's not exposed to the public.
Can you please make it (and keep it) so that friendships are symmetrical? I.e., "friend" rather than "follow". IMO that's the enshittification inflection point of Facebook.
Or at least use proper terminology for following someone with reciprocity: stalking.
do you mean "without reciprocity"?
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I love the idea generally of creating a social network that's meant to not suck, but the whole tapping phones thing is bad. The major benefit of Instagram, for me, is that it allows me to maintain relationships with people I am unable to physically see for long periods. I don't need social media to stay in touch with people I am physically present with, I need it for bridging distances.
this is awesome. godspeed. or should i say friendspeed
thanks for bringing it back!
Pretty cool implementation, except when I read
> a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online
my skin crawled. I live a fulfilling, creative life. I'm married, have kids, the whole nine yards. My best friendships are with people I know almost entirely online, or haven't physically seen in years because we live on different continents.
I have little interest in most of the people I see regularly, because we're friends only because our kids are in the same classes.
> So I created an iOS app
CTRL-F "android" "linux" "git" 0 results
sigh
PLEASE if you are developing only for the Mac ecosystem, you should be required to put (Mac only) in your title so the rest of us don't completely WASTE our time.
> My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it. Websites like that genuinely change the course of people’s lives — people meet, fall in love, build families. That’s incredible to me.
> If Friendster helps even a few people find that kind of connection, it will have been worth it.
Did you tap phones for OkCupid? The type of network you are building does not work that way -- you will not build the same types of connections in-person as you can online. I hope it goes well, but it's not the same type of thing.
judging from what i hear people say. all you have to do is be able to display who's online from your friends list, and a chronologically ordered list of their posts. thats it. the major platforms are optimising for ads so much they cant even achieve this level of basic functionality
>only way to make friends is actually make friends
Good luck to the app, but I'll never use this.
The overwhelming majority of people I know with whom I want to have long digital conversations with are also a minimum of 500 kilometers away from me.
can rename it botster
Could you make it so you can have group chats but you can invite anyone you’ve tapped before and they can all talk together (but still not be able to talk outside the group chat)
yes this is already included
Honestly, nothing could make me trust yet another centralised and closed source social network.
on the fading connection and monetization - you could let people pay to re-up the connection from fading as opposed to meeting in person again first, and its makes them really think about whether meeting in person is worth happening again or would ever happen again, is the connection itself valuable in another way any way
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
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> $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue
That's...a good deal? Assuming even 50% margins, that's a solid yield.
It’s nothing of value buying nothing of value. If you only see dollars and not the utter nonsense you’re either young or not very bright.
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Please don't post generic ideological sermons on HN. Sure, any money anyone ever spends or invests could arguably be put to better use. It’s a jerk move to bring it up in a tangential context like this. We have no idea what kind of charitable/benevolent work or giving this person does, or what they may plan to do in the future with any investment gains they make. It's not fair to post this kind of condemnation based on knowing very little about them, and it's against the guidelines to engage in ideological battle or introduce generic tangents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In a world where I am trying to use my phone much less due to ingress of tracking, destroying my mind etc having a social media where its required is a bit of a no-no for me tbh. Additionally I feel like this puts more friction on those of us that are shy and weird, for us the internet and online places are where we can be ourselves. I wouldn't ask you if I could follow you on Twitter, I'd just do it because I find your stuff interesting. Putting a hurdle in the way of connection might sound daft but is enough for many not to use it or miss-connections.
For me the special sauce that's been taken away from SM is just seeing my friends stuff, I want to see your dog with out it having to be a 2min video with onscreen graphics, SEO keyword optimisation in the post title and brand tags. Show me your fluffy dog updates, just dont force me to ask you about it first.