Jianyu Li and Jack Chen
A social networking program that requires people to physically interact before becoming friends. Making friends through events that people that have the same interests or hobbies and not judging the book by its cover.
Should socializing begin with a glance of appearances? Can we not judge the book by its cover and connect through interests and hobbies? Are current social networking apps desensitizing our abilities to socialize in reality?
Existing problems
- No real bond – misinformation
- online – offline (first impression)
- Neglect of the real world
- Lack of community – the feeling of membership
Proposal for the innovative online community
Goals
- Concept of simply doing an activity that you would interest yourself and meeting friends during that activity; reality before virtuality
- Offline interactions are often more genuine compared to online
- Pushing users to socialize in reality instead of mindless scrolling
- Creating an intentional healthy interaction and then sprawling a sense of community
Unique
- Being true to the user’s personalities; their interests lead users to friends with the same interests
- Urban/cultural exploration
- Creating a strong bond for the community through offline interaction
Similar Apps
- Meetup – Meetup is a great place to start when you’re looking for a whole new ring of friends, or after you just moved to a new city.
- Atleto – ATLETO is like Tinder for athletes looking to make friends. You can choose between 40 sports happening in your area and request to join an event.
- REAL – What makes Real different from other friendship apps is that you swipe on personality and not appearance, so you actually don’t get to see your new friend’s face until you both match.
There are a lot of apps that allow you to go meet other people and perhaps make new friends, but the process of these apps is not coherent to true human interaction. Creating profiles and using the appearance of profile photos can mask who you are.
One of our major ideas for the program is the fundamental change in how we use online social media platforms. Instead of using a virtual medium to promote a virtual lifestyle, we want it to promote a real lifestyle.
The user’s interests (a form of their personality) are guiding them to activities that they might enjoy. And once the user gets to a destination, they can see people who come for the same activities and choose to interact with them.
Users can also use VR within the program to explore different parts of a city and learn about interesting histories of a particular location, even interact with virtual characters significant to that location.
We hope that by creating this platform where people who have the same interests are brought together, the connection would be stronger and create a healthier online community. Using a modern platform and making friends in the old fashion way.
1 reply on “GoMeet – Be yourself”
Excited to see you exploring the idea of offline as well as online connection. I think there’s lots to be said for helping people make real-world friends – there’s good literature on how loneliness affects adults, and how men in particular are having a hard time maintaining friendships in middle age. I need more details about the ways this platform will be specifically implemented. Are you proposing an activity you want to do, and soliciting someone to come do it with you? Is that really different from MeetUp? How do you deal with ideas of safety and security in this model – women in particular may be reluctant to meet someone they know nothing about for, say, urban exploration. I’d love to see you think through these details, particularly the safety details, and put something forward as I think there’s something really intriguing about meeting new people in the physical world, not just online. Maybe there’s a more involved meeting online, leading to a physical meetup and then a return to online?