I agree with a lot of what you say here. I’ve been running a 3h daily time boxed social media site for the past 6 months and even though traffic is now a crawl compared to the initial burst of activity when I started it, there are users who check in daily and it ends up being a lovely experience I think.
I am working on mobile apps and redesigning and reengineering a lot of the site and I love your thoughts on a blog focus. I’d love to let people host a small blog on the site that would also connect to their actual blog. I’ll add that to the roadmap.
Definitely stop by some time! https://seven39.com/
I like the concept though having the limited time would make more sense if the site was structured around a specific topic or interest. Otherwise, I don’t get the appeal of having a fixed time to social media with random people over nothing in particular. But if you told me that there’d me a gathering of <<insert fav hobby/interest>> for three hour block each evening (or even just a couple times per week), I’d be excited to check it out.
That's an interesting idea. If, for instance, there was a window of time for people interested in a show to come together to discuss the latest episode (assuming the episodes aren't just dropped all at once), then I think it would be an interesting place to visit since everyone is there for the very same reason and there's something of interest that happened recently that would focus the discussion.
I will say I did visit the site months ago and found that just hanging out with random people wasn't that compelling to me. In the early days, it was fun because it was new and there was a lot of energy, but after that, you really do need something to bring you back day to day.
You could segregate by regions. Your evening is not my evening.
Due to the time difference, I only login when I’m out for a night out or staying up late. But it’s still an enjoyable experience when I get to log in.
What youre missing is that most people have self control issues, and your product is essentially a commitment device. As most addicts - they reject such devices.
I like what youre doing but just saying - youre dealing with a very difficult problem.
That’s a fair point. I don’t see it as the antidote for people who are addicted though. It’s just a nice place for people who want to engage less. I’m definitely aware it won’t be a big thing.
If you’re looking for an actual antidote to the addiction, I don’t think that will exist in the form of a product, that will come from individuals themselves if it ever does.
There's also a subset of users that embrace such devices. I'd wager that's OPs target audience. The ones that would reject it are a lost cause and shouldn't even be considered.