How to find friends: I came up with an application to find a company
IN RUBRIC "BUSINESS" We acquaint readers with women of different professions and hobbies that we like or are simply interested in. In this issue, the creator of the inSearch App, Alina Mikhailova, explains why it became so difficult to coordinate leisure and why she needed to make a mobile application to search for a company without a dating-related subtext.
Loneliness in the social network
In social networks you can find like-minded people for any interests, but the search takes a lot of time. We often fail to quickly contact with those who can go somewhere with you today or tomorrow. You can write in a personal, but it's a long time, and people will hardly be happy to make excuses for why they cannot go with you - although they may have many reasons. If we talk about strangers, we are faced with the fact that behind the offer to go somewhere there is a hint of a romantic date. To clarify this, you also need to spend time on correspondence.
From what I saw with friends on social networks, they usually delete their posts about finding a company if no one comments. After all, it is scary to appear from the side of a person with whom no one wants to communicate. Even if in fact the responses went, but in a personal, and not publicly. I myself had a case when after the publication of the post two hours had passed, and no one had yet responded to my proposal - I really wanted to remove the post altogether. Then went the likes and comments, but, unfortunately, not at all on this topic. I could not find the company among my 500+ online friends, I had to persuade my girlfriend.
It turns out a strange situation: friends in social networks - hundreds and thousands, but with whom to go and try something new - you do not know. For example, I wanted to train in zumbe or go to the theater - and close friends are used to having other interests. Do not understand. Write on the wall? Thanks to the algorithmic tapes, only your close friends will see your post - those with whom you communicate so often. The rest of the social circle will never make you a company simply because you do not know where and with whom you are ready to go. Social networks are good to share information, but their ability to search for a company for offline events is not enough.
Netider
While the inSearch App is more used by people, strangers are among themselves. Although there are situations when users suddenly find their friends there: “Oh, you, too, are walking! Have not seen each other for a long time”. If we have a lot of friends, it’s impossible to keep in touch with everyone. And if you have not communicated with a person for two or three years, then it is psychologically difficult to take and write: Let's go there and there. "It is difficult to ask for it personally, but through the application it is easier to do it - for that it was created. If someone writes in it means that he needs it. But we don’t have written on my forehead: “I am looking for a company”.
It is clear that we will be compared with Tinder - we are compared with Bla Bla Car. This is a common thing: a new startup is compared with those older and better known. But in the tinder there is only a search by sex and age, and, of course, it will be difficult to find a girl to go to the exhibition together. We can find a person only by the general interest of the event. This is important, and we were guided by this from the very beginning. When people, for example, are in a relationship, it is already somehow not good to use the dating applications to search for a company. But then how to find new friends for joint leisure? If the familiar social circle has already been formed, it can be difficult to expand it.
Development from scratch
I took up the development two years ago, at first it was an educational project that we were engaged in in our spare time. Then I had a permanent job and a magistracy, and I had to work on the application at the weekend. I did not know at all what I was getting into and how difficult it was to make such an application.
I gathered the team in one of the largest groups of iOS-developers who are video lessons and want to apply them in life. In the first composition there were only newbies, and by now no one except me remained from him. There were various reasons for turnover, and the first difficulty I encountered was remote work. There are people who need to be in the office, under supervision, and for remotely they cannot motivate themselves; if they have to constantly “kick” themselves, they quickly burn out. You inevitably come across this, and there is no one hundred percent way to calculate that this will be so in advance.
There is another problem with the remote control - asynchronous operation. Once a week you can gather a group of ten people for a general chat, but even this is difficult. Nevertheless, gradually we had a team of iOS programmers and a team of developers for the Android version.
Company at the aqua party
Now we, firstly, want to expand the geography of the application, and secondly, to work more with shares for those who are collecting the company - such as "gather four people and go to the cinema for free." I want to give people more reasons to go somewhere together. The more you do a project, the more you learn about the behavior of others. You are sure that he will do it this way, but this will not happen - and you are convinced time after time that you are in a hurry with the conclusions. For example, I was not ready for the fact that people would look for a company for a joint campaign at aqua parties.
The problem of "with whom to go" is faced by people of completely different social groups. Take, for example, the annual festival "VKontakte": users from 12 to 60 years old are looking for a company to go for it. There are those who go to events more often and therefore are constantly looking for a company. There are those who are more at home and just are not used to looking for a company. But for one reason or another, this question arises in almost every person.