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Flock — A messaging app for making plans
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Hey - Just testing this out, love the idea. One quick thing to think about, is for a trip you want to plan, but don't have the details. For example, I have a trip I go on with a few friends every few months, but no specific date and/or location as it changes. I want to create an event with a Name/Description, invite people and then update the when/where after we have a conversation.
Also think adding a poll or vote system would be slick.
Great Stuff :)
Hey @ajwaxman, very nice. I've had this idea for a while now, good to see people are trying to tackle it. To me, this type of product serves the niche of "casual plan making". I'm not interested in individually texting 5 of my friends for plans, but want to let a group know that I'm getting dinner tonight, inviting anyone and everyone to join. I find myself wishing something like this existed.
What has traction been like, if you don't mind me asking? I noticed you launched at least a year ago. Any weekly active users? Has your personal friend group adopted the app? Why or why not? I feel like that's a great test.
@taykcrane yes you definitely nailed the problem we're trying to solve.
We still get a fair amount of users signing up on a daily basis, but engagement isn't great. While I love the functionality of the app and it works well for someone like myself with 200+ friends on the app, for the majority of new users there is not much value. We didn't do a good job of easily allowing people to join plans that don't have the app.
If I were to do it all over again I would focus on making it at first a single player game (for example having a curated list of fun ideas) in addition to an app that works well with a lot of people. I would also make it easier to invite friends to plans that aren't on the app yet.
Let me know if you have any suggestions!
@ajwaxman A few suggestions, actually.
First, it sounds like you're no longer working on it? I'd suggest you keep working on it! I really, really love this idea. It's the idea I've been riffing on in my head for the past few months; I didn't know it existed until today.
My second suggestion is a feature. I don't like the idea of a single player game, that isn't what the app is for and it sets the wrong idea (plus there are million apps like that already). My vision for this app (in my head) provides real value for users who are not on the app. I think this can be achieved by allowing Flock users to select friends that aren't on the app, and text them anyway. The text would read like any other text "Do you want to come over for drinks tonight?", with the added addition of a "- sent via Flock" (I called my idea Signal). The text also comes from my number (not sure if this is possible in iOS), and responses are sent back to my number.
If the app is able to default to texting, worst case scenario is it's pretty equivalent to what I do now and what people are used to. I can still mass-invite 5-10 friends, those that are interested can reply, and those with the app installed get a richer experience.
Curious, did you build the app yourself? technical co-founder? Outsourced it? Do you and your friends still use it? If not, I'm curious why it fell out of favor. But if so, it really sounds like this idea works on some level. And I really want to have been right over the last few months, haha.
@taykcrane my friend/co-founder Misha (https://twitter.com/mburshteyn) did all the obj-c work. My friends and I use it, but not as frequently as I would like. In addition to having some friends that have Android phones, I think most ppl still find it easier to text for making plans
@mulligan the invite friend button in a flock only shows your Flock friends. Go to the 'Add Friends' tab in the left menu to invite contacts / FB friends who are not on the app!
Let me know if that still doesn't work and thanks for pointing out the confusion! Helps us understand what we should be making more clear!
Adam here, co-founder of Flock, a 2-man side project were building to help solve a problem that we have: easily making group plans!
Before Flock, we primarily used text messaging but found it annoying to not be able to leave threads, invite new ppl once a conversation started, and to not have a central place to see what plans we were actually trying to make.
With Flock, you can easily make casual or specific plans, invite friends, and join/leave the conversation as you see fit.
Let us know if you have any suggestions for the next release!
@johnmurch Looks like that's a bug :-/
Thanks for finding it and all the suggestions!
@helencrozier sorry about that the website only accepts US and Canadian numbers. You can go to the App Store directly by going to flockwithme.com/app in you browser or searching for 'Flock' in the App Store
Let me know if you're still having problems!
@johnmurch thanks for the note! One of my favorite features of Flock is the ability to create plans without a specific time or location in mind. For example, we currently allow you to pick 'casual' locations and times like "I wanna go to Colorado sometime soon"
We've thought a lot about adding a polling system. While polling is a pretty slick feature, I think that it would make the app more complicated than it needs to be. Overall as we move forward we're aiming to simplify the UI and take features away vs bloating the app with more features.
Either way, I appreciate the feedback and am gonna try and see if I can think of a clever way to add polling :)
@ajwaxman ah ok. that's confusing. but inviting people is generally a really challenging thing. We just spent 3 months user testing to try to get it right with Cluster.
For whatever reason, maintaining an independent friend graph on Flock seems like overkill for the utility of the app.
Looks really nice, but I can't get the invites to work. I've attached facebook and my address book and it's not finding anyone.
One is the loneliest number.
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