from Hacker News

Have ‘hobby’ apps become the new social networks?

by throwaway55479 on 9/8/24, 11:32 AM with 251 comments

  • by marginalia_nu on 9/8/24, 12:19 PM

    Can't be overstated how good having a setting centered on some common activity with low stakes social interaction is for building relationships, romantic as well as platonic.

    Hookup culture just isn't for everyone, and the notion that it is has been the cause of a lot of grief and agony.

  • by brushfoot on 9/8/24, 3:09 PM

    "Users near you" functionality is sorely needed in online spaces, considering how much interaction has moved online.

    Reddit has worked around their lack of it to some degree with location-based subreddits like r/AtlFilmmakers. But subreddits are high maintenance, and they isolate content. Plus, the naming conventions aren't standard. Maybe there's r/AtlFilmmakers for filmmakers in Atlanta, but another subreddit for musicians uses the state in the name instead of a city.

    It's a bit like folders vs. tags. It would be nicer to have a single filmmaking subreddit with the option to filter on users' locations -- and default filtering out of location-specific posts in other places.

    That wouldn't just make for better dating, though it probably would compared to something like Tinder. It could also lead to stronger local communities and better health outcomes.

  • by IgorPartola on 9/8/24, 12:49 PM

    Sharing a common interest is the best way to meet lots of new people. It creates low stakes interaction opportunities and removes the creep factor (if you are at a meetup for fans of model trains along with like a dozen other people, it’s not weird that you are talking to some of them).

    Better than any app, go get a hobby in person and get out there to meet people who are into it. Chances are you present yourself way better in the real world vs online. Online dating, especially the Tinder variety, really skews to work for some demographics and not others (I am not talking about gender here so much as age, location, etc.).

  • by KineticLensman on 9/8/24, 12:13 PM

    > “The thing about Letterboxd is there isn’t a ‘central town square’ like there is on X; it’s a very single-channel conversation,” says Gracewood. Comments happen in-line – similar to those on the Guardian and Observer websites – meaning that it’s less possible to performatively repost content into a main feed in order to encourage a pile-on. Similar situations exist on platforms such as Goodreads and Strava, where it’s possible to communicate with and message others, but not to publicly shame them easily.

    > Because hobby apps are nicer places to exist, people spend more time on them – and they can eventually turn into services that are more than advertised. That includes finding like-minded people with whom you’d want to spend your time romantically.

    > One reason that people may be starting to find love on apps not explicitly designed for that purpose is because the expectations are lower – and as such, the atmosphere is less sexually charged.

    I feel an 'Ask HN' coming on: "have you found love on HN?"

  • by mattrighetti on 9/8/24, 1:35 PM

    We will see how long this lasts.

    We try to search for meaningful relationships, which socials stole from us apparently, by switching to different socials, pretending they're going to do better than the previous ones.

    Wouldn't ditching socials altogether get us in a better place on this matter? It is utopia at this point I guess. Some socials could actually be useful to make new friends/relationships but it seems to me that the very people that constantly complain about the "anti-social" aspect that our lives have taken are the ones that go on and try 1000 different dating apps, give up on friends after a couple of months to try and find new "better" ones.

  • by Gualdrapo on 9/8/24, 12:21 PM

    I do use Strava a lot to record my rides and stuff, and even more since I could afford a Wahoo - but I really hate the 'social' side of Strava. It tries to make you 'competitive' so hard.

    Granted, as a professional loser I'd like to find someone that likes cycling too, though cycling alone is great too - still, I'd rather find that person in one of those rides than in some weird thing like Strava fly-by's or something.

  • by Renaud on 9/8/24, 2:01 PM

    I wish there were more offerings for socialising around hobbies.

    Strava looks great for some sport activities, but I’d like to meet other nerds into 80s computing, hobby electronics, comics, sci-fi, home automation, kayaking, city exploration, etc

    You invariably end up with lical Facebook groups, which are just a flow of posts, and require a FB account, or some non local reddit group, or small scale website you have no idea exists.

    Something is missing. It sure would require mass appeal to be useful, but a ‘Tinder for your hobbies’ might be nice. Get matches from people near you who enjoy a cross-section of the same stuff.

    Add some social aspects for those who like to show off or share (don’t force it though), make discovery easy, let people organise events…

  • by xiaoxiong on 9/8/24, 1:35 PM

    Strava is the only social network I’m on anymore, and I pair it with a number of weekly, in person group rides. It’s a great way to maintain connections, and a wonderful source of encouragement.

    Typical social network dopamine hits probably aren’t great for your health, but when it’s paired with 100 miles of exercise, I think it has a net positive. I’ll definitely admit to pushing myself further than I typically would for those Strava kudos.

    That said, I don’t think something like Strava is particularly useful without the in person aspect to go along with it. Heck I don’t even know how you’d gain followers without doing group rides.

  • by 2-3-7-43-1807 on 9/8/24, 4:34 PM

    I don't like how the article arbitrarily mixes seeking hobby mates with pursuing romantic interests. While practically both realms naturally border on each other an intersect it is important to set an initial semi-offical mode of expectations. Networks like Couchsurfing died because mostly men started to use it as an app for hooking up. And that just kills the vibe and also undermines the trust.

    Anybody here from Germany who would share practical experiences with such apps?

    I'm quite apprehensive of the idea that this is now how you meet people. Of course it doesn't necessarily have to be but myself being in my early forties, single, few friends, full time computer job have to say that it is a challenge.

  • by dagelf on 9/8/24, 1:55 PM

    Sparknotes spawned a quiz site, TheSpark, that eventually morphed into OKCupid... that started out being successful because it gamified making quizzes for people, and then stumbled on the miracle of asymmetrical matching. Ie. matching people not based on common interests per se, but on curiosity... or "satisfying" their curiosity. Turned out to be a great way to get to know yourself, and what you are really looking for... I'm sure a lot of people figured out what to look for in their true ideal partners, and some even managed to meet them on the site... Match.com takeover obviously completely ruined everything... rooting for more copies, hell, even a decentralized protocol, that can bring back notjust the romantic, but also the platonic- and self-insight-giving parts of TheSpark...

  • by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 9/8/24, 12:27 PM

    For a long term relationship, sex is the icing on a cake made of shared values and interests.

    It isn’t surprising at all that focusing on real life shared interests and values first instead of sex first would be a good strategy for finding a long term partner.

  • by isaacdaoust on 9/8/24, 7:23 PM

    Notably absent hobby in the article is music. I'm currently working on a website that will function as a "hobby app" for digital music/album collection.

    https://discollect.app my public profile: https://discollect.app/profile/clo0oz2hw0005fv02qbxn866c

  • by PLenz on 9/8/24, 12:40 PM

    It's a cycle. The internet started with usenet and specific interest newsgroups and niche forums a la phpbb. Then the wide open of social media. Now back to specific again. A generation from now it will shift again.

  • by praptak on 9/8/24, 4:42 PM

    I remember when I used to play Go online. Obviously the servers, in addition to supporting playing Go and observing the games, had chat functionality.

    The popular saying on the chats was "Give a man a chat server and he chats for a day. Give him a Go server and he chats for life."

  • by tinybrain on 9/8/24, 3:46 PM

    What happened to Meetup?

    I moved to a new city in 2015 and made a handful of long term friend groups, all started from meetup. I moved to a new city in 2024 and it's basically empty... except for some Wiccan book clubs, or MLM pyramid schemes or whatever.

    I don't get it. Seems like there would be competition in this space to replace Meetup, but there's nothing? Or did we all just collectively give up on meeting strangers.

  • by fcatalan on 9/8/24, 8:29 PM

    Small Twitch communities do it for me.

    I'm quite of an introvert. And all my long term friendships have faded or my friends have moved cities or countries.

    But around lockdown I took up miniature painting and started watching a bunch of 50 to 100 viewer channels about the hobby. With those numbers the streamer knows you by name by the second time you show up and you soon bond with others in chat.

    This got me in contact with the small local hobby club, but also by the time I could attend an in person nationwide convention my family was astounded: dozens of people they knew nothing about were greeting me, stopping for hugs and chats, giving me stuff from their stands...

    I've seen both romantic and business relationships emerge in that environment.

  • by mhh__ on 9/8/24, 1:14 PM

    Anecdotally run clubs are the dance halls of today (i.e. go to meet women)

  • by bilsbie on 9/8/24, 4:30 PM

    New simple “social network” idea:

    Paste in a list of your interests (maybe use a list of subreddits you’re subscribed to, or you X inferred interest list)

    And it will suggest people to chat with ranked by most common interests.

    Could be a weekend project. Anyone want to team up?

  • by mrkramer on 9/8/24, 6:21 PM

    There is always place for niche social networks e.g. the most weird niche social network that I remember(and that is legal) was Ashley Madison[0]; I found about it in 2015 when it was all over the media because of the embarrassing breach.

    Apparently it was and is used by married people who seek affairs or in another words people who want to cheat on their partner. If you can build community and business around that then you can build community and business around anything.

    Btw I think dating sites invented the whole chatbot affair thing because Ashley Madison was using fake chatbot accounts to catfish and lure people into buying Ashley Madison membership or whatever they use to monetize their product.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Madison

  • by bradlys on 9/8/24, 3:38 PM

    This article reads "we noticed certain apps have been increasing in users. Everyone is complaining about dating and dating apps. Maybe users have found love on these other apps!" But then doesn't show any proof or even anecdotal evidence of some users who would share their experience. "Yeah, I saw he would get the weekly record for the section between 14th and 34th. I just had to reach out... We're expecting our 2nd child this autumn - we're naming them Cassette."

    No, this "article" as far as I saw was simply conjecture.

    If there's any amount of this happening - it's hellishly small or limited to people who don't go out at all. If you didn't meet the love of your life in college, dating apps still seem to be the reigning king of the well educated white collar professional (HN audience). I think I've only met one couple that met at a club/bar - almost all others met through a shared hobby (where they met face to face originally) or at a party with mutual friends. By far the leading one though is college + dating apps. IRL meeting as a way to form a relationship after college seems pretty uncommon for my well off and well educated crowd.

  • by bilsbie on 9/8/24, 4:36 PM

    Friend making wise, I’ve been trying to reach out to interesting sounding people on X and on Reddit.

    I’m still trying to figure out how to sound casual and just interested in chatting and not having the first message sound too weird.

    But I’ve made a couple friends and had a bunch of good chats.

    I wish reddit, X, and even HN would be more encouraging of direct messaging people. That would mimic real world networking better where you’re usually breaking off into one on one or small groups.

  • by bitnasty on 9/8/24, 5:08 PM

    “Hobby apps” are social networks. Just because some social networks try for mass appeal with generic features like microblogs and photos doesn’t mean that other social networks with very specific features like GPS logging of bike rides are not.

  • by petesergeant on 9/8/24, 5:37 PM

    I’m currently building this for TV shows. Our idea is that the social aspect should be limited to your real life friends and family only, because that’s where the really magical discovery happens. We’ve got a small number of very dedicated users who all know each other in real life, and they use the app as an adjunct to their real life conversations. We’ve finally got it in the App Store, so seeing if we can scale it over the next few months should be fun!

  • by amelius on 9/8/24, 5:04 PM

    Just give people full control, and the protocol will be successful. Look at e-mail for an example.

    Of course, this doesn't mean that it can be monetized easily.

  • by osigurdson on 9/8/24, 12:51 PM

    >> “free speech”

    Does not belong in quotes.

  • by janmo on 9/8/24, 12:59 PM

    I can really recommend HelloTalk which is a language learning app. Meetup.com also used to be a good option but not so much anymore.

  • by alistairSH on 9/8/24, 4:23 PM

    Using Strava to match with cyclists is so weird to me… it’s a meat space activity, so go find a local group ride.

  • by chungus on 9/8/24, 12:47 PM

  • by Beijinger on 9/8/24, 4:20 PM

    "Goodbye Tinder, hello Strava: have ‘hobby’ apps become the new social networks?"

    I don't know, but has anyone tried using Tinder in the US recently? Just scammers, crazies, wackos and strange people - if you can get a match. Tinder has gotten totally useless, in fact, it has become a marketplace for lemons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

    Your chance of finding a decent date would be bigger on a Hire a dog walker app or hire a cleaner app. Some years ago, I was told that Couch Surfing is a dating app. Kind of.

    Good luck.

  • by haunter on 9/8/24, 2:41 PM

    WoW did this 20 years ago tbh. It was a social network for most before the game itself.

  • by TomMasz on 9/8/24, 8:18 PM

    Strava got me to join a few clubs (I'm not in any IRL club) but the messaging I just ignore. Not everything has to be a social network. I'm looking at you LinkedIn.

  • by osigurdson on 9/8/24, 1:09 PM

    I used to use Strava a lot but now I don't even think of recording rides, runs, heartrates, etc. A lot of people I know are the same.

    The real "killer app" is Trailforks.

  • by vxxzy on 9/8/24, 3:07 PM

    Anyone wanting to get a feel for unintended uses of a product should go look at google map reviews of locations in India. It is fascinating and ingenious.

  • by hermannj314 on 9/8/24, 1:21 PM

    If your goal is to meet a human person, it is probably best to go to a social media site that is largely made of humans.

  • by KaoruAoiShiho on 9/8/24, 1:12 PM

    I heard Roblox and Valorant are also great ways to find dates, but perhaps for a younger demo.

  • by datavirtue on 9/8/24, 3:54 PM

    I didn't make it past "Singletons."