Socialchair- Actually see your friends
The Origin:
Back when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I kept having a recurring issue making plans with my friends. I’d copy and paste the same text message, send it to 10 different people and group chats, twiddle my thumbs and wait. It never worked. The response was a mix of crickets and convoluted back and forths that led to no plans being made. Worst of all, I felt like a nuisance to my own friends, as if I was annoying them whenever I asked to hang. In 2016, I began working on a solution to this problem and now, five years and four versions later, I’m excited to launch Socialchair 4.0.
What I want to achieve:
- Get friends off their phones and hanging IRL
Headlines like these have become all too common and, with Socialchair, I wanted to create an app that helps bring friends together in real life where real memories are made. Socialchair is designed for the hangout makers and the hangout takers (it rhymed, roll with it).
2. Create more and deeper friendships
Best friends can text eachother 1,000+ times a day and it won’t change their relationship. While Socialchair will be useful to BFFs, it’ll be most effective for good friends/acquaintances- those people you’d like to hang out with more but never actually reach out to. Currently people just hang out with their existing group chat and their best friends, leaving droves of fun hangouts and friendships unrealized. With Socialchair this doesn’t have to be the case.
3. Make everyday life more social
On a daily/weekly basis there are a lot of things we do by ourselves (working out, shopping, random errands) that we’d like some company for. However, the random tag-along-text can feel a bit weird and forced. If only there was a way to let people know what you’re doing in a way that puts the impetus on them to reach out to join. Spoiler alert; there is 🤝
Current offerings:
In terms of plan-making options, on one end of the spectrum, you have Eventbrite, Facebook Events, Google Calendar. These work well for events that are further out, the details are set, and they happen very infrequently. You wouldn’t use these for a casual lunch with friends.
I want to focus on the other end of the spectrum: casual, frequent events that happen within the next week, tomorrow, or even the same day. The two main competitors here are texting/group chats and apps like GroupMe. My main issues with these current offerings:
1. Texting directly: Reaching out to someone to hang out can be anxiety-inducing and changes the dynamic of your relationship.
- You have 0 information on where they are, what they want to do, and if they’re even free. This results in a very low likelihood of success. If you reach out and for whatever reason, they aren’t available, you will have burned social capital and will feel slightly rejected. If you try 1–2 more times and it happens again, even if they had legitimate reasons all 3 times, you are very unlikely to reach out again and will just assume that friendship wasn’t meant to be (which is no friggin’ fun!)
- Also hangouts, for whatever reason, are viewed in terms of how they’re asked instead of what the actual hangout is. If I call someone to ask them to lunch they will view that much more seriously (Am I pregnant? Are you pregnant?! Is someone pregnant?!) than if I text them and ask them to lunch despite it being the same exact hangout. Even texting directly can often be seen as more serious than it really is and creates anxiety for both parties.
- You forget to invite people you would love to see. How many times have you gone out, posted on your story, and received the dreaded “TFTI” from a good friend? When you’re making plans you hit up the 1–2 group chats you are in and maybe a few free agents. But if you scroll through your texts you will see someone that you spoke to just over a week ago can be buried (given all other texting conversations) and won’t be on your immediate radar to invite. If you talk to someone every week, in this age, that is a pretty good friend you’d like to hang with. Texting is optimized for all conversations- not plan making.
2. Groupchats/GroupMe: There are several issues with group chats including:
- This is a self-selecting group of people. You have to actively choose who to include or not include. If you hit up your main group chat, you are hanging with the same crew over and over again. You are missing out on developing new friendships with different friends.
- A Group chat's primary purpose is for conversation, not for making plans. If you are trying to make plans the conversation can go off course and lead to a bunch of unnecessary notifications. This often leads to group chats getting muted and plans getting missed.
- If it is a new group chat, you oftentimes don’t know the other people and it is just a bunch of random numbers. All Socialchair users have a name and profile picture.
- Only the most extroverted people will reply in front of a group of strangers. Most people will sit back and wait for everyone to reply first thus resulting in analysis paralysis. There is no accountability in group chats. This is also embarrassing for the group chat creator getting ignored in front of a bunch of people (nerd!).
- If two separate plans are proposed and the group plan is determined by like count (common on GroupMe), this can get toxic and lead to backroom texting “hey like my idea pls”. Plan politicking!
Socialchair philosophy:
I want to be the Instagram Stories of making plans. What was so innovative about Stories was that it created a low-pressure environment (no public engagement metrics) for people to share more casual aspects of their lives. We’ve always had the ability to send photos directly but, similar to reaching out directly to someone to make plans, there’s social anxiety involved with putting yourself out there. Stories allowed you to share photos with everyone and no one in particular at the same time. Additionally, if someone replies to your story it isn’t weird because you essentially started the conversation by posting the story. This same philosophy applies to Socialchair — if you post a hangout and no one replies, you won’t feel rejection because you aren’t inviting anyone in particular. Conversely, it isn’t weird for someone to message you about your hangout because you posted it — you’re actively signaling your desire to hang with people.
Hangout Creation:
This is the screen to create your hangout to share with friends. The goal of this screen is to get as much information as possible about without taking more than 20 seconds. I don’t want to bog users down with exact location or time selection since those are the most variable aspects.
This screen is aspirational — where you want to go and what you want to do. It doesn’t reveal your current location like ‘Find my friends’ or ‘Snap Map’ as your current location may not be indicative of your plans. Also, it’s a bit creepy to just show up where someone’s at a la Joe from “You”.
Groups:
The #1 question I got from users of earlier versions was; “How do I exclude people?” I didn’t want to do that for a few reasons:
1. It would create a really toxic app built on exclusion and who isn’t invited.
2. The moment users select individuals to invite or not invite, is the moment Socialchair operates like texting/group chats and I lose. People won’t download an app and add on their friends if it’s just a prettier version of what they already do.
But I realized I had to address this so I came up with this idea for “one-way groups”. Let’s say you have 30 friends (look at you all popular)- with this feature you can create a subset for different groups in your life: coworkers, bookclub, gym buddies, hiking homies, spicy pisces, etc. These are different than normal group chats in a couple ways:
1. Only you know everyone in the group. The individual members can’t see who else is in the group and can only communicate with you.
2. Additionally, members don’t know they are in a group or what the group is. It’s sole purpose is for the ease of the group creator, almost like BCC on emails.
So, how will this feature change the experience? For starters:
1. Users will add more friends because they no longer have to think “this person has to see all of my hangouts?”
2. Users will post more hangouts because they no longer have to think “is this worth bothering 20 of my friends for?”
3. Users can tailor different events to different groups i.e. “Hike Sunday?” to hikers, “Happy hour?” to coworkers, etc.
Hangout Duration:
There is a preselected button with 2 options:
Today: Hangout automatically expires after 12 hours
This week: Hangout automatically expires in 7 days
I’m most excited about ‘This Week’ because it lets people plan ahead for the weekend and will remaining in the stream for 7 days, keeping the app busy and making it a more social version of a calendar. There are a ton of great use cases like posting on a Monday “Pregame my apt Friday night” and friends will see that throughout the week. It also lets people not only make plans for the weekend but broadcast confirmed plans so they don’t have to constantly answer “what are you doing this weekend?”
Neighborhood list:
This allows users to select the general area they want to hang out in. So instead of “Who wants to grab lunch?” in all of LA, you can specify Culver City which could inspire someone located there to reply and be down. ‘Anywhere’ is also an option if you really don’t know!
Create hangout:
Once you hit create hangout all your friends or whoever is in your selected group will get a push notification that says “Brentwood. Brandon: Hike Kenter Canyon?” What’s so special about this is that two people who previously weren’t talking or in a group chat now have a warm lead on what the other wants to do. Imagine a good friend saying “Beach Run tonight?” Neither of you were talking but now you have this option to hang without any of the anxiety of texting out of the blue.
The Stream:
For the stream view you will see all pertinent hangout info- the user’s name, picture, what they want to do, how long, and what neighborhood.
Free Mode:
While I hope the hangout creation screen is easy enough for anyone to quickly create a hangout, I understand that some people are more reactive when they create plans. I wanted to create a simple alternative to having to create a hangout: Free Mode. If you hit the toggle in the upper right hand corner, you are activating Free Mode which will instantly send a notification to your friends saying you’re free for the next 4 hours. Think of it like the Bat Signal; a super easy way to let your friends know “hey I don’t know what I want to do but I’m free and want to hang”.
You will also notice next to their profile picture there is a little 🤘. If your friend is Free Mode you can tap their photo to instantly send them a “wyd 🤘” message. You can also access this emoji on your friends list in the conversations tab. This provides an easy way to start a conversation and quickly check in with a bunch of friends at once. Also with just 2 clicks, someone going Free Mode and someone hitting their photo, you can be in a conversation with a friend knowing they want to hangout. Much easier than copying and pasting the same text to all your friends like I used to do 🤦🏻♂️.
Socialchair hangouts:
Socialchair’s hangouts will offer suggestions of cool things to do in your city. Users can click ‘share’ and it will allow them to easily share this hangout to their stream.
Open hangouts:
Socialchair balances a fine line between not creating social anxiety for users but also creating an engaging experience. Open hangouts let you see who else is attending a hangout. Good examples of this would be for a friend’s birthday party, a pick-up basketball game, or anything where friends of friends are invited.
Open hangouts will only work for hangouts that were shared to All Friends- if it was shared to a specific group the hangout will say ‘I’m down’ instead of ‘Join’. Once a friend joins your hangout all of your friends and their friends will get a notification saying ‘You and (your friend)are hanging out’. This is designed to generate interest and engagement for your hangout.
The idea behind open hangouts is if I reach out to a friend and say “want to get lunch?” it seems very much like just an idea without urgency. If I reach out and say “Nick and I are going to grab lunch- do you want to join?” you are much more inclined to reply/join because you know this hangout is A) real B) will happen with or without you (FOMO bro!!).
What is also cool about Open Hangouts is it opens up the Socialchair friend graph a bit. Originally this app was designed to just make and share plans with friends which is still the primary goal. However, with these open hangouts you can now see friends of friends attending mutual events and can use Socialchair to make new friends.
Conversations:
As I mentioned earlier, one of my core beliefs is that groups and group chats are fundamentally poor ways to make plans with friends. I believe the best plans are made 1 on 1 and then additional people are added. If I make a plan with Nick and Joey hears about it and wants to join- he will not try to change the 2 people’s original plan.
This is why Socialchair has no group messaging and all communication, even for open hangouts, is done 1 on 1. There is no accountability in group chats, you can always say “Well Nick didn’t reply either”. When you hit up someone directly they are much more likely to reply.
I don’t expect people to just post a hangout and have friends show up- all plans involve a level of communication and this can be done privately with the hangout creator.
On top of the conversations view, you will see all of your friends with the 🤘, similar to what you see in the Free Mode view. This allows you to easily and quickly check in with all of your friends by going through and tapping their photo and sending the automated “wyd 🤘” message.
This provides a much easier way to remember all your friends you want to hangout with and invite so you never forget to invite a friend again.
In conclusion:
I am very passionate about this problem and believe Socialchair will go a long way in fostering new friendships and curbing loneliness in an increasingly “connected” but disconnected society. I hope Socialchair can eliminate the social anxiety that comes with making plans and can help connect friends in the real world.
If you want Socialchair in your city or have any thoughts you want to share- please email me at brandon@socialchair.co
Download here
Bonus thoughts:
Why there are no likes on Socialchair:
I don’t want to create an environment that encourages superficial behavior, nor do I want to seep your focus and energy and increase your screen time. If you have 1,000 friends on Instagram and 100 on Snapchat, Socialchair is designed for those 20–40 friends that you’d be comfortable seeing.
Additionally:
1. ‘Likes’ can create social anxiety for users. If they post a hangout and no one likes it, they will feel awkward and are much less likely to create another one.
2. A ‘like’ tells a user nothing. If someone likes your hangout does that mean they want to hang or they just like what you are doing? Then you have to message them and say “hey saw you liked my hangout- do you want to hang?” That is awkward and you are right back to square 1.
3. People change how they act when likes are available (i.e. Instagram). Users would start posting hangouts to get likes instead of to make plans.
Development timeline:
2016–2018: Began working on the first version. This was designed to my specific vision and personal pain points. Development of the initial version took 1.5 years and 1.0 went live in February 2018.
2019: 2.0 went live in April 2019. After getting a substantial amount of feedback from 1.0, 2.0 focused on suggesting plans and improved map functionality. In retrospect, these were the wrong issues to focus on as the core issues weren’t related to users not knowing what to do but instead of how to show what they wanted to do.
2020-Present: 3.0 was ready to go live in March of 2020 but was delayed due to the pandemic. I resisted a shift to virtual hangouts since it was temporary and not a problem I was passionate about solving. I used this year to redesign the entire app and add additional features you see above.
About Me: By day I do player marketing for NBA players. By night I work on my own iOS app Socialchair which helps you make and share plans with your friends. In between, I bike around LA.
