Stay connected, without the noise. Optimised for social connection, not addiction.
A lightweight social platform built around real connection over engagement. A 48-hour experiment exploring what social media could look like without ads, algorithms, or addictive loops.
Instagram pulls you out of the moment. WhatsApp lets relationships drift. Neither is designed around the people you actually care about. They’re designed around keeping you on the platform.
The result is a weird tradeoff: a lot of us want to delete Instagram, but we don’t — because it’s the only place where looser connections live. People you don’t message directly, but don’t want to lose touch with. WhatsApp doesn’t solve that. It’s too intentional, too direct. So we end up with one app for noise, one for logistics, and nothing for everything in between.
Start from contacts, not content. Strip it back to three primitives: people, updates, and presence. Then remove everything that doesn’t serve that.
No suggested accounts. No ads. No engagement loops. No notifications designed to pull you back. The feed is chronological, unfiltered, and only people in your phone. An ambient map shows rough locations — not precise, not trackable, just enough to answer “is anyone nearby?”
I timeboxed the build to 48 hours. That constraint forced every decision to focus on the core loop: open → see people → understand context → act → leave. Everything else got cut.
Stack: React Native, Supabase, phone number OTP, MapKit.
Working prototype. The constraint proved something interesting: a social layer that is ambient rather than addictive is technically simple. No ranking system, no recommendation engine, no engagement optimisation.
The hard part isn’t engineering. It’s the cold start problem. A social app with no people isn’t social. That’s a product challenge, not a technical one.
