Your comment resonated with me. I'm just about the launch the a social network. Our whole goal was to design around authenticity, something that is severely lacking in other offerings.

If I were to offer some unsolicited advice. Authenticity arises out of real communities, and that is something social networks are quite bad at. They often focus on the self much more than communitiy participation. I think that's why old chat networks and forums were so good at building communities, as you had to truly contribute to be part of them. You didn't even have an identity until you contributed to the community and revealed it while doing so.

Current social networks allow you to hit "join" or "like" and that's all the participation you need to get your validation. You're part of the group just by signing up, rather than because you helped make it a community by contributing.

That's probably why this story resonates with people here so much. It's not just a tech business, it's an attempt to contribute and be an integral part of the local community. Not something every startup gets to do.

Absolutely agree. We have made some design decisions to force consideration into the social aspect in the aim of increasing the quality of interactions.

Interesting, could you elaborate on the authenticity bit? How will it differentiate from current offerings?

I don't want to spend too much time talking about it as I'd rather show it. I can say that we designed to focus on quality rather than getting drunk off the of the crowd as practically all other social apps do.

Edit: Send me an email and I will be happy to let you know when we launch.