Hey HN! I shared an alpha version of Thread a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20933272.

I’m really excited to share that the product is now ready for more people to use!

To check it out, just go to https://get.thread-app.com. I’ll be responding to questions and feedback here and by email at daniel@thread-app.com.

The full story and latest updates below:

I started Thread because I was incredibly disappointed with what’s currently being referred to as “social networking”. I felt like these products are actually incredibly anti-social. They didn’t make me feel any more connected to my friends or family.

There seemed to be no place to easily share what I want with the people who matter most. I’m a pretty private person, and hated the pressure and dopamine-seeking incentives of public profiles. Not to mention all the ads, tracking, and clickbait news all centered on “engagement”.

Group chats worked OK, but IMO fell short on features that allow for long-lasting relationship building. They lacked the ability to persist things that matter in the long run, like photos, adventures, events, and important conversations.

So, I did the entirely irrational thing of quitting my job to start building something I could use with my friends and family.

The alpha release was a pretty simple group chat. Over the past three months, here’s what’s been added:

- Photo albums. All photos shared are stored in an archive. In the future, I hope this looks something more like Google Photos, with the ability to organize, export, and manage a group’s media seamlessly.

- Private stories. This is like a journal of thoughts, photos, and other media. I wanted a way to share these with certain people, but also have the option to keep them entirely private (which is the default).

- Event planning. One of the goals of Thread is to get people offline and actually do things together IRL. This necessitates fully featured event planning and scheduling tools. It’s getting there...

- Opt-in location sharing. Being able to see where my friends and family are can be incredibly useful when planning something, and helps me feel closer in spite of long physical distances.

- Location bookmarking. I like to curate and share my favorite places and places I want to go. It also makes it easier to plan for longer term trips. This is kind of like Google My Maps, but a social version.

- Shared video watching. I wanted a quick and easy way to simulate a living room where everyone can watch the same things at once, and chat about it. This eventually could include news, music, and more.

- Threads (no pun intended). This facilitates topical discussions - you can switch from the main conversation to any other conversation with the same group of people.

- Pinned content. A simple way to keep track of important items and reminders.

- Some fun Easter eggs you can ask me about :)

Current flaws (or future opportunities):

- Not E2E encrypted or decentralized. I understand it’s a huge concern for many on HN. My focus is on new ways to communicate and organize social information, and less on how to secure that information. For now, the best private services would be things like Signal and Mastodon.

- Notification control and group management

- Invite system is based on phone numbers. It can be finicky.