stiq.it - Feedback? (location-based social platform)

Poll

Interested in private beta?

Note: If people want access to private beta - DM me!

Hey guys, been working on a new social platform and would definitely love your opinion on how to make it more efficient, any changes to the front-end user experience etc?

I love the idea of location-based messaging, but I believe it lacks an emotional attachment. Hence, stiq.it; kind of like twitter in that it focussed on individual messages, but the messages (or 'stiqqers' as I call them) are locked to specific locations.

With stiq.it, you can write a personal/private or public message and stiq.it to your current location, forever, (anywhere in the world), and others can only see/discover it at that location.

In order to help make the idea grow and stick around, I've gamified it in a really odd way. Each stiqqer/message can be upvoted/downvoted (like reddit posts), which not only deals with spam, but the score is used to calculate a 'local rep' (kind of like 'street cred.') for the user who wrote the stiqqer. So it's like 'karma', but you get a unique score for different locations around the world.

Give http://stiq.it a quick read - it's a really short explainer page - and I'd appreciate any feedback on the general idea, but specifically on how you could see yourself using 'stiqqers', and potentially other uses for them (some examples here).

I've no idea if this is going to work, but it'll still be fun & a huge-learning experience even if it fails :smile:

And if there's any way you can help with this weird idea, PM me!

Thanks,
BP94

PS: We're doing a private beta so get in touch if you want the invite link!

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 1

Potally_Tissed

So it's basically twitter, except you can only read something if you're in the same place as where it was written... on a technical level that sounds quite clever but I'm not sure I see the point :dontknow:

Reply 2

Async

What if I want to message my best friend that lives very far from me :frown:

Reply 3

estel

Original post by Async

What if I want to message my best friend that lives very far from me :frown:

Then use a different service!

Reply 4

bigboateng

I will be looking at the source code later :wink:

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 5

BlackPoison94

Original post by Potally_Tissed

Yeah it's a step up from Twitter - it's location based.

I think travellers would definitely be interested :smile:

I mean, let's say you've entered a new city and no clue where to go/what events there are - could use this as a means to differentiate places :smile:

Also when Twitter started, it was just a platform where people could leave messages and the evolved! We want users to eventually, when we get traction, determine the way stiq.it evolves!

Hope that helps?

Also thanks a lot for the feedback!

Reply 6

BlackPoison94

Original post by bigboateng

I will be looking at the source code later :wink:

Posted from TSR Mobile

Actually was thinking of an OpenSource type of thing e.g. from people building their own tours/treasure trails to developers building upon stiq.it and how it could be used...

Reply 7

BlackPoison94

Original post by Async

What if I want to message my best friend that lives very far from me :frown:

Sadly, stiq.it doesn't allow you to do that...

It's meant to be location based hence within a certain radius!

Reply 8

Async

Original post by BlackPoison94

Sadly, stiq.it doesn't allow you to do that...

It's meant to be location based hence within a certain radius!

Nah I was just being silly, I think it's a very good idea. Could be the next thing.

Reply 9

Potally_Tissed

Original post by BlackPoison94

Yeah it's a step up from Twitter - it's location based.

I think travellers would definitely be interested :smile:

I mean, let's say you've entered a new city and no clue where to go/what events there are - could use this as a means to differentiate places :smile:

So when you say you have to be in the same place as where a message was posted, how specific is that? The same city? The same room?

Reply 10

bigboateng

Original post by BlackPoison94

Actually was thinking of an OpenSource type of thing e.g. from people building their own tours/treasure trails to developers building upon stiq.it and how it could be used...

What's the backend, php?

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 11

Potally_Tissed

Also, isn't this basically what Drop Messages does?

Reply 12

BlackPoison94

Original post by Potally_Tissed

So when you say you have to be in the same place as where a message was posted, how specific is that? The same city? The same room?

The same city :smile:

We've done it on amount of miles at the moment but currently working on an algorithm using population density!

Also you'll find our interface is completely different to Drop Messages - our future updates too. We want to add 'stiqqers' at main tourist destinations so people can follow them like a tour. At the moment, we have a feed (a bit like Twitter) where users upvote and downvote like reddit. Also, you can see the 'stiqqers' (messages) that you posted on a world map.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 13

Mad Vlad

There are some fundamental flaws that I see with this project.

Social networking is about mass appeal and compelling content. If you're encouraging a small fraction of the population to create content in sparsely populated areas, you're going to be left with tumbleweed and very little in the way of "buzz". If people are only able to interact with strangers near them and not their friends outside of the immediate area, you'll not get the sustained user interaction you're looking for. Social networks work because you, your friends and people you know are on there and are able to make meaningful connections. I don't see this here.

Similarly, if the content isn't compelling, people will not be interested. Especially if they're having to wade through a sea of irrelevant chaff to find content that interests them. Do you not think that this will suffer from it becoming an annoying advertising platform where 99% of the content is some hipster coffee shop talking about its ethically sourced beans and mandatory shrunken jeans and sockless brogues dress code? I also think this is open to a lot of privacy and security problems. What's to stop someone from just randomly tagging a person's house with a message advertising for sex, for instance?

I don't really get the USP of this business - I'm not seeing why there's a benefit of sticking a message to a location for anything other than the metaphorical pin in a map-type situations. Perhaps I'm missing something here? Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc. can geotag messages (and actually for privacy reasons, many people disable this capability) why is this different?

And most importantly, how do you plan to monetise this business? I think advertising will do nothing but damage this service even more for the reasons I stated above. It'll simply make it harder for users to find content they're interested in.

I see there's some potential with the tourist use case, but you're then looking at having to provide multi-lingual capabilities, validated and trusted content to make it a go-to guide app for tours.

I think it's admirable that you're giving this a go, but I don't think the product works, there's too many issues I see with the model and for that reason, I won't be investing, so;