Does anyone else remember this app? It came out around the same era as Path.
I just googled Path because I thought that was the one. But it was indeed Color I was thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs
I recall they (claimed they) had some crazy tech that used the microphone to detect if you were in the same room as other users.
[1] Ah, it was a mere $350,000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs#Launch
At that point I realized it wasn't a serious company.
The last time I walked by the building it was "The Institute for the Future."
Unless they engineer it so they do not have any data to sell, sooner or later someone's gonna sell that data.
They've weasel-worded their privacy policy to allow this, the buyer of the data just needs to pretend to be a potential investor or buyer:
"We may disclose personal information in the context of actual or prospective business transactions (e.g., investments in Mozi, financing of Mozi, public stock offerings, or the sale, transfer or merger of all or part of our business, assets or shares), for example, we may need to share certain personal information with prospective counterparties and their advisers."
for example peer-pressure recommendations.
Look, you and Jacky are in town, both of you are close to Margo's Restaurant, you should meet up there. Here is a 5% discount.
or
Both Jacky and Margo are going on this weekend to Ulaanbaatar for a fancy snack, flying Fred Flintstone airlines. They have great rates this weekend and you are just sitting on your couch watching reruns. Why not get a flight on Fred Flintstone airlines (here is the link), you might even sit next to one of them!
ev also does mention in the NYTimes article, for those that have NYT subs
"They shared stories about reconnecting with old friends via the app — moments that seemed valuable enough that customers might pay for it, he said. Mozi is free, but plans to charge for premium features it develops."
(disclosure: i work on the mozi app)
I have no interest unless I see a sustainable, unshitified business model.
Most Americans travel 0-2 times per year. About half don't fly at all.
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
This is fairly shortsighted. How many people actually travel from city to city. I bet the vast majority of people have a 3km bubble around their house and work and that's as far as they travel 90% of the time. Additionally, it tracks when you are going to an event. At that point, you are already out of the house around other people.
I like the idea of an app that is "private. Non-performative. No public profiles. No public status competitions. No follower counts. No strangers." but I think it doesn't need to hinge on always going out and traveling. It should simply prompt you to check in with friends (not in the mental health status way) but simply "Hey, you haven't chatted with Sarah recently, say Hi" or "Steve's birthday is coming up, wish him a Happy Birthday". Simply just connecting with friends will perhaps result in "IRL" connections, but basing the whole app on connecting after those plans are made seems a bit "cart before the horse".
Depending on your permissions and if you would let it know about Facebook events, calendar events, etc. then you might get notifications or see when someone is going to be going to the same restaurant, etc. I think events is the key, while you're focused a bit on city. They do specify event so that's something, perhaps.
The thing that feels different between now and Web 2 is that the Internet is so much bigger. So you can build an app that has a niche and it can still be pretty big. I was on the early beta for this app and it's great, especially if networking and travel are a big part of your life. I honestly have no idea if it even needs to be bigger than that although I know it can be.
But they shot themselves in the foot by trying to become Yelp and moving Foursquare into “Swarm”.
Their problem was they couldn’t come up with a monetization strategy that was working and at the same time Yelp was raking in the valuations.
It's small-scale, has high barriers to entry, and entirely user-directed. In other words, the exact opposite of what makes money in profit-driven social networking. And that's exactly why group chats are so great.
Group chat has been a thing since the late 90s and remains superior in my mind as well. It often seems like the real problem some of these apps are trying to solve is that there's no good way to monetize group chat.
"My people" are people who once were in that sort of temporal and geographic bubble, but are not necessarily local top me any more.
Some of the most important people in my life are spread around the globe, and we only get together in person once a year or maybe even once a decade (more of those lately, given global health stuff in the last half decade).
I bet almost everybody who's ever been to Burningman more than two or three times has the same sort of geographically distributed friend circles. Same as anybody who regularly goes to a specific conference (I have friends I originally met when I was going to The Perl Conference in the late 90's), or festival (I have a close cicrle of friend who mostly live 1000km away that I met/meet every year at a music festival).
>Mozi also helps you decide where to go. “Events” on Mozi (currently a beta feature) lets you see who you know may be going—or considering going—to a conference or event before you go. (If you happen to be going to SXSW, join the Mozi event. I’ll be there too.)
Seems like more of a "networking" app as opposed to friends as it mentioned ...
Still, I don't dislike the general idea.
An app that tracks your location (and future location), founded by a venture capitalist?
I'll pass thanks.
(I'd be interested to see it there is a way to build this in an e2e privacy-preserving way, perhaps built on tech used in Signal and the fediverse, where only you and your contacts ever see unencrypted data about your location and events?)
Despite the likelihood of this being not all that privacy friendly, I'm just considering the concept for now.
No special app needed, since it can be done with a spreadsheet.
While that's true, at least for me you also end up with some deep deep friendships that easily survive years or even decades apart, which are closer and more meaningful than most of the friendships with people you see daily/weekly.
It feels like the last social dating taboo is open time bidding. something like: "here's my instagram. I've got an extra seat at performance X, a reservation at restaurant Y, or lift tickets for resort Z. intro yourself if you want to be my guest, or bid cash for dutch"
it's like everyone's dancing around that as if they're above it somehow.
Barq, a furry fandom-focused app, has some of the same features. It's primarily for local meetups or seeing when your friends are in town for a convention. Unfortunately, Barq's location data has been used to dox and harass people before (even though they implemented a system that returned "fuzzy" GPS results).
If the primary value of the app is "know when person A is at location X", think through all of the ways this information could be used to hurt people. Even contrived and silly ways. And then try to safeguard it as much as possible.
I recently shared a blog post about how BlueSky could implement "limited audiences" without changing their current infrastructure. (Spoiler: It involves state-of-the-art cryptography.) It may be worth reading.
https://soatok.blog/2024/11/29/imagining-private-airspaces-f...
A few considerations off the top of my head:
- relationships are extremely fragile and can exist in all sorts of awkward middle states, outside of just "friend enough to notify when I'm in town" vs not. the risk of creating awkward meatspace side effects is extremely high with this kind of thing, with very large downside risk that human beings are very attuned to. for example: exes, former bosses or colleagues gone sideways, people you said something weird to once at a party, stalkers, etc. are all people you might have in your contacts
- relatedly, contacts growing out of sync organically over time is actually a feature, not a bug. it's easy to let contacts die when they die by themselves without having to prune them -- and nobody's delicate feelings get hurt by letting this happen
- existing on a mobile phone while not being an attention-sucking nightmare cesspool -- while also not /creating/ another attention-sucking cesspool, despite having all the social data necessary to do so -- seems like an impossible challenge. how do you get people to remember your little app in a sea of Trending Flamebait notifications? (others have noted this related to funding model, but that part feels surmountable, especially as a passion project from a billionaire)
I just connected Mozi to my nearly 1000 contacts and it found zero matches, meaning I’m the first one in my network to use it. I suspect to be solo for a very long time.
There's no Android app (yet) and no website - effectively making this an iOS only social network.
I'll pass, thanks
Huh?
As for the app itself, it looks more like something niche Ev made in an attempt to enrich his own life than a business poised for growth. There is a place for that. I hope, anyway.
this thing like medium, will become enshittified quickly.
Isn't it interesting how the vibes for hiring changed? Before, every founder would write something like "we are hiring!". Now it is: send us your curriculum, but we won't reply.
BTW I just tried it and what a terrible app. Feels like a ghost town.
Isn't that Whatsapp or Signal is?
I also have come to realize that most repeat founders who are in the same space usually do not make great founders. They almost always make the same mistakes.
I would not fund this company.
