@michaeldick it is anybody around you who has the app. Thanks for the comment. For now, it will show you anybody who is closest to you. So if they happen to be in NY, then you'd still see them. I chose this so new users wouldn't see empty screens. It's funny, because of this choice and since we just launched, that means some people in China have been able to say "Hey" to people in America :)
@karenxcheng thanks for the message Karen.
It's funny because I used to be a technophobe, so building something like Hey has been a crazy experiment for me. It is not meant to reduce social anxiety but I bet it will. I like to think of it as an ice breaker, and not just for hookups. I like to think of technology / online networking as something that augments your real world relationships, not something that supplants them.
An example is when I connect on LinkedIn with somebody before or after a meeting, I feel like it solidifies my real life relationship with that person.
To be honest, I do have some social anxiety, so maybe that's why I like to connect with a ton of people who I might have never seen in the person. It takes a lot of guts to approach somebody... a lot of things could go wrong, like timing, or maybe they were in a bad mood that day. Maybe you didn't shave that day and scared them away.
Today I met about 10 really cool people in Hey. A guy who is gonna connect me with Tech Crunch, a girl who thanked me for creating something that isn't as creepy as Tinder (she found us by typing "dating"), a guy from Pakistan who is having fun making American friends, and another app developer who is creating a chat app. Long story short, I just met a ton of people today that I would have never met in person.
My main reason for building this app is so you can unlock the power of your local network. People are always thinking about how to make money, and overlook the value of people around them. We built this assuming that people are the most valuable thing. Just think about it. There are a ton of super useful people around you that you may never meet. Hey, or a similar tool like NextDoor could help with that. I just realized that my neighbor downstairs is a coder and her husband is a neuroscientist, pretty awesome. We connected through a conversation about Hey.
We haven't even been in the App Store for a week, so it's hard to say. Right now my opinion is that I'd rather have it than not :)
Hung out with Kurt, the guy who made this, at the Product Hunt meetup in LA last week. Saw the other Hey and thought I'd share. Basically you can "Hey" people nearby. If they "Hey" you back you can start chatting.
@andyfortson thanks for posting Andy. Couldn't have described it better myself. That was an awesome Product Hunt MeetUp too. I hope there are more in LA, met lots of awesome people there.
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