Swipe through your favorite photos of your loved ones. Create albums, share memories, and spread love - one swipe at a time.
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This is great.
I set it up and was conspicuously swiping in bed. My wife is all hey, what are you doing? I’m all nothing.. put the phone down on the dresser.
No, let me see your phone etc. I relent, she opens the app with sulphur smoldering in her nostrils lol, then she starts poking around, and we have been having a really great night since.
In a similar vein, we used "Kinder", which is like Tinder except it's for choosing baby names - it shows you names that both you and your partner swiped right on.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kinder-find-baby-names/id10684...
By Bridged7756 2025-07-2416:132 reply Now hear me out, Tinder but for kids. Could go by the same "Kinder" name.
By ronsor 2025-07-2420:06 This is a horrible idea, but it's probably profitable, so it will be done.
By orangepanda 2025-07-2416:29 Now hear me out.
No.
This made me realise that I want Tinder but for arbitrary content and able to be shared via links - photos, restaurants, date and times, or whatever.
Create a Google Drive folder for your trip photos, sync it with OAuth, send a link to your group chat, and share the ones that everyone liked.
StumbleUpon2?
> StumbleUpon was a website, browser extension, toolbar, and mobile app with a "Stumble!" button that, when pushed, opened a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interests, similar to a random web search engine.[1] Users were able to filter results by type of content and were able to discuss such webpages via virtual communities and to rate such webpages via like buttons. StumbleUpon was shut down in June 2018.
By epiccoleman 2025-07-2418:55 I loved StumbleUpon but I have this odd feeling that it was sort of the first augur in my life for what algorithmic feeds would do to my attention span. But it really was a cool thing, in those last days of the pre-social media web, to find all those neat little passion project sites.
By SketchySeaBeast 2025-07-2413:122 reply I really loved StumbleUpon, but I fear reviving it would lead to nothing but inorganic traffic and malware.
By Cthulhu_ 2025-07-2414:28 It'd only work today if it was hand-curated and every submission continuously checked in case the underlying page was altered.
That said, it would work. Whether it would be financially viable is another matter, but going for profitability is ruining a lot of fun.
I also fear that the centralization of the web to a handful of websites has made a revival impossible. If 80% of your stumbles are just reddit posts or imgur links, whats the point?
By Izkata 2025-07-2414:17 That you can exclude them?
People seem to have forgotten StumbleUpon had a pretty decent configuration page where you had to manually select what topics you were interested in, and that submitting new pages wasn't as simple as just submitting the URL. On top of that, I'm pretty sure I remember a "block this domain" option if you clicked the arrow next to the thumbs down: https://i.sstatic.net/VLS4c.png
By Buttons840 2025-07-2410:503 reply How about Tinder that shows content instead of pictures of your date, and then sets up dates with people who like similar content.
By Buttons840 2025-07-2419:06 Actually, such an app could match people for non-romantic dates.
By dragonwriter 2025-07-2420:13 Its not the worst idea, but it seems less of a business and more of a feature for an existing social networking site, which already has the contents and the likes and just needs to add a few pieces for the dating bit.
Then people would form meaningful relationships and have no reason to keep returning to your app after the first few minutes of engagement. That is not going to keep the VCs happy.
Then don't make it VC-funded: make it a charitable foundation or worker-owned cooperative or something.
All joking aside, if you were to make a charitable foundation or worker-owned co-op, how would you overcome the same challenge software itself has? — Letting the world know it exists.
Anyone can code up an application over a weekend. That isn't the problem. VC money is for use in letting everyone else know that you created it. Long, long gone is the age where you could throw something up on the App Store and see the masses flock to it. It takes serious resources to get the word out nowadays.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with building software just for yourself. Not everything has to be shouted on every rooftop. But this specific type of software doesn't work so well if you are the only one using it.
Word-of-mouth. Say to your users: "if you want this to be useful, ask your friends to use it, talk about it online…". (You'll get low conversion rates from this, but it's free, and it doesn't promulgate an attention economy the way that billboards and banner ads do.) Advertising is effort, but it's not that hard, really: most advertising firms are extremely inefficient at their jobs, but they get paid because the alternative is nobody advertises the thing.
It also helps if your service is still somewhat useful to individuals, in the absence of network effects. So, once the core service (organise meetups between users) is implemented, get to work on aggregating and categorising social events that already exist. (Use standard protocols, to leave the ladder around for others to climb, but keep track of your API consumers: some of them might be hostile anti-social entities like Facebook, whose existences need to be nipped in the bud.) Once you have something genuinely useful, pick a small-ish city, and guerilla advertise in it. If you've done things right, that should be enough.
Now, leave a skeleton crew on it, and move on to the Next Big Thing. You should be able to maintain three or four pieces of infrastructure in this way, some of which you might even be able to charge money for! (But resist the temptation to monetise and enshittify, or even just excessively-tweak, what you've built.)
> Word-of-mouth.
If that worked, why would anyone give up their business to VCs ever? Having VCs is not a fun place to be. It is a horrible situation to find yourself in (unless you are the VC, I suppose).
There was a time where you could rely on word-of-mouth, but those days are behind us. Everyone and their brother is vying for word-of-mouth attention nowadays. The noise is too great. It takes vast resources to emit a usable signal.
Two reasons:
1. Some businesses can't just be built from nothing-but-software-and-server. You need warehouses, logistics, and all sorts of other fixed costs that exist before you can start recouping your investment. Not everyone has the money to start such a business, despite otherwise having the ability.
2. People aren't entirely stupid. If something's a scam, con, or otherwise a detriment to human flourishing, they're not going to use it unless they have reason to doubt their assessment. Advertising is good at getting people to associate thing with sentiment, which can override their bullshit detectors.
Something that's genuinely-useful, and genuinely-better, can spread without any advertising spending, once it's past the threshold where noise no longer dominates. (For example, Plausible Analytics: I poked around their demo, concluded that it was strictly better than Google Analytics, and (after a couple of chats with one of the founders) started telling everyone with a website about it. I was clearly not the only one.)
I have no idea why anyone would give up their business to VCs if they don't need investment to kick it off, and aren't running a long con.
> You need warehouses, logistics, and all sorts of other fixed costs that exist before you can start recouping your investment.
That type of business is rarely appealing to VCs. VCs seek rapid growth and quick exits. Warehouses are the antithesis of that. Hard to scale and even harder to sell. It is an investible business for the right type of investor, but VCs and investors are not synonymous.
> once it's past the threshold where noise no longer dominates.
You are technically correct here, but we're clearly talking about the stage before you've already overcome the noise floor.
> Plausible Analytics
They claim to be self-funded — in other words, acting as their own VCs. Which is all well and good when you're already rich, but if you're already rich (and not looking to get richer) why not just hire a concierge/matchmaker? What do you need a poor man's app for?
You don't need to be rich to fund your own digital service business, if the only costs (while you're small) are a server and your own time. You merely need to be not poor. There are many people unable to do that, but people with the time to post on Hacker News probably have the time to start a business.
There are plenty of logistical barriers other than access to money, that prevent people from starting businesses. All these barriers can be overcome by being rich, but that's not the only way they can be overcome. Collectively, we can call these ways-to-overcome-barriers "privilege" (to crib from the language of academic feminism).
By 9rx 2025-07-2514:59 > You don't need to be rich to fund your own digital service business
You do if you want to transcend beyond the noise. Which you claim said business has. I'll take your word for it. It isn't technology that makes a technology company. Technology is easy. The hard part is getting to know the world. That's what takes tremendous resources nowadays (as before, it wasn't always so hard, but unless you have a time machine...).
By openplatypus 2025-07-2417:301 reply RE: Plausible, you should have checked their compliance and terms and conditions after checking demo and using it. There are some gotchas to be aware of (lack of DPO, being one red flag). Going umami, matomo would have been cheaper and safer.
By wizzwizz4 2025-07-2420:00 Afaik, Plausible doesn't need a data protection officer. See Article 37 GDPR. (But I'll follow that up with them, in case it's an oversight.) I have read Plausible's documentation, and I haven't identified any problems with their practices.
Umami's homepage requires JavaScript to load, which is a red flag. And, as expected, there's something wrong: it's owned by a US company, which makes it a no-go.
Matomo is excellent and I second your recommendation.
By Buttons840 2025-07-2419:07 If the app could be used to find non-romantic dates, people could keep using it even after finding a romantic partner.
By blendaddict 2025-07-247:161 reply Isn't that just TikTok and TikTok share button?
But the original idea is to crowdsource preference data and only publish the liked ones. Like screen testing a movie with a focus group. Tiktok doesnt really do that do they? Can yiu access interaction data from tiktok?
So a feed of links, videos, pictures or text shared by people that others could somehow vote on emphasize popularity, showing the most voted content on some form of easily accessible landing page...
I feel like I have heard this idea before.
I know you think its just social media smartass, but the guy specifically mentioned getting the opinions of a private group, and exporting the data so as to post the best photos on a completely seperate platform.
Its not social media, its kinda similar, but not public, and its main goal is to export the approval data to be used elsewhere. No ones supposed to keep scrolling on it
By blendaddict 2025-07-2412:14 I know that the youtuber james scholz (jvscholz) mentioned recently that he is working on developing such a project. It even had a landing page. I can't find the link again however and would have to click through all his youtube videos.
By arghwhat 2025-07-2420:45 I'm being sarcastic because Hacker News itself, and more generally Reddit, fits that exact description.
But most chats like discord / signal / telegram / fb messenger(?) can already react to images you send. Just send them in your group chat, then upload the ones with the most reaction.
By samrus 2025-07-2411:31 Its almost there. The difference is the tinder like UX of swiping to input approval data, and being able to programmatically export the approval data so other apps can use it without you having to do it manually
Its not impossible that those chat platforms can make plugins to do this. But theyd definitely have to build it
By ecolonsmak 2025-07-2416:07 I built a small throwaway project that's kinda like that. https://flipr.social/
I should add the links for sharing as a feature update.
By pwdisswordfishz 2025-07-2412:41 What do you do when every restaurant swipes left on you?
This would actually be a really good idea except it´s 100% this will be abused in no time and a cesspool of disgusting or disturbing pics "for lulz"
On the other hand, arent infinite socmedia scrolls not already this but for the ux? with the like or bookmark serving as your right scroll?
By stavros 2025-07-248:41 I don't think the OP meant for this to be public, probably something only for a private group.
