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Swarm — Keep up & meet up with your friends (Foursquare unbundled)
Swarm is the best way to keep track of the places you go. From the new café downtown to that killer ramen spot in Tokyo, you’ll never ask “what was the name of that place?” again. Whether you love to be a local, or are trying to travel the globe, check in so you can remember everywhere with Swarm.
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There was a great conversation about Swarm pre-launch here. Now that we can all play with it, what are your thoughts?
(I'm downloading it now... stalking you shortly)
@dan_hopwood - I was chatting with some people last night about Swarm and making plans with friends in general. The older we get, the harder it is to meetup/hangout spontaneously. Swarm and Facebook's Nearby Friends can help with this but they both don't reduce the friction in making plans themselves.
I want something that automates that for me. Here's my MVP:
It's a daily or weekly email that's sent to a small group of friends. The email includes the activity (e.g. see a movie, go to lunch, grab happy hour), location, and time. Each person that receives the email can RSVP or ignore it entirely w/o fear of rejecting an invite from a personal friend.
I might do this. It's easiest enough to hack together.
@rrhoover I see so much potential, my issue is simply a lack of friends on the app. Adoption and engagement will of course be their biggest challenge, competing with Facebook's 'Nearby Friends'.
IMO they should leverage their 'Nearby Plans' feature to raise awareness, solving a currently underserved problem: spontaneous meetups with friends vs having to plan weeks in advance.
To that end, it would make sense to me to allow social sharing of plans (via a shareable link) that – as well as communicating the posters plans – encourages visitors to make their own, via the app. Interesting that it's not currently possible – thoughts on why that is? Perhaps it's in the backlog..
@rrhoover interesting, could work. It's a difficult problem to solve. Many have tried & failed – a mix of passive (like Swarm) & automated (e.g. using calendars) approaches. I find it's one of those areas where it's particularly difficult to predict engagement.
Maybe the right play is along the lines you've suggested. Super simple, suggestive, collaborative & let users fill in the gaps themselves.
@rrhoover i know it has been a while since you posted above; Have you hacked or come across a solution which reduce the friction to make friends meet or go out in real life?
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