Heya. At first I wanted to pile on the negativity due to really. Really bad red flags from the title alone signaling slop, sociopathy (calculated sensationalism), sociopathy (guiltless artificial scarcity peddler), and some really big "Gretchen stop trying to make Friendster 2 happen" energy. But as a longtime HN lurker who lost my first account and now have to carry the "account created after 2022" stigma when I had been training GPTs in my own slop in 2018, I value a storied post history pre-dead internet and it may be your best investment yet. (also you have shared positive posts about some things I like).

So just wanted to say I am rooting for you and I may be able to provide some acutely specific but embarrassing input(s) about how a Friendster 2 can happen, based on my Friendster 0 experience (it is definitely not about breaking up in high school where deleting profiles sends the news rippling to the whole universe) (it may involve learning that Indonesian black hats were scary and many and also how the social graph was uncached and always computed server side per profile visit). Now that you own the "Friendster" trademark, I hereby greenlight your soci-emdash-ability to manipulatively hint at the "possibility" of restoring profiles via the Friendster archive project, but keep it as a possibility until you big enough the patent trolls be phone tapping (this is really weird)

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 :)

>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.

Most ridiculous part of the story -> You can still make money from ADs in 2026.

The plot of Anaconda 2025, but Friendster.

+1 for an android app

This is an awesome idea!

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!

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.