Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other
cauenapier.comRelated: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608570 - June 2026 (166 comments)
Related: Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608570 - June 2026 (166 comments)
I've had a strange experience this week at a maker meetup in my city. Couple dozen people came to make a short presentation about what they're building and there was a somewhat lively networking with food and drinks. The project quality was all over the place but what struck me is that nobody really wanted to keep in touch after the meeting beyond adding each other on LinkedIn. I have even created a Telegram group and got several folks to join but they never replied or posted anything so today I had to just delete the group. Perhaps I didn't make the right impression or I've misunderstood the reasons people go to such meetups
> but what struck me is that nobody really wanted to keep in touch after the meeting beyond adding each other on LinkedIn
This is why I gradually stopped attending local events and meetups. When I first graduated college and started going to events and meetups there was a sense that everyone wanted to be part of a community first, and the presentations were a chance for community members to take turns putting together something for the group.
Over time the meetups started attracting more people who just wanted something transactional out of the group: They would show up, present, then only stay long enough to try to gauge if they could get anything out of the audience: Recruit them as customers for their startup, get contacts for fundraising, find someone who might offer them a job, or some other goal they were seeking. They would stay long enough to collect LinkedIn contacts and then leave, many never returning again unless they had something else they wanted out of the group.
It only takes a few sessions where meetup attendees arrive expecting a community discussion but then realize they’re being pitched someone’s startup or being mined for business leads. Then they lose interest in attending future events. The meetups became a shell of the former community. I still attend events from time to time but it often feels like most people are just there for networking and move on from conversations as soon as they determine the other person isn’t in a position to get them a job
If people ask me for LinkedIn (or Instagram in other contexts), I just get their number. It pierces the barrier of formality and makes it more personal. If the person is worth remembering (for friendship or work), connecting on LinkedIn isn’t going to be adding any value.
Few things annoy me more than the 5 minute convo followed by “let’s connect on LinkedIn”
I grew even more skeptical over the past year when a VC dude connected to me (during a conversation) and then later removed me. No harm done as we barely know each other. But it caused an even stronger distaste for that impulse.
What I still like instead? Take my card!
> they would anyway because they’re building up a persona
While I’m sure some folks were doing it for that reason, there are a whole bunch of us who were just doing things like that because it was fun. We didn’t need to be popular (but that would have been nice too), we were just kids looking for a community where we fit in.
The Internet back then was a grab bag, a hodge podge, a diaspora, and a most importantly a place to be who you wanted to be instead of a place where your “real” identity followed you everywhere.
I'm actually thinking about implementing some sort of "permanence" for some people, specially for recurring visitors of a given site. But that's still an early thought.
Your risk conclusion elite club this way. So I think this makes the idea less interesting.
Would that be a little guy permanently on the page even if the user isn’t present, or a permanent persona for a user across visits?
A permanent persona for a user across visits. Could even be across website visits, if they all use townsquare.
go further and let me have the same persona in townsquares across various sites. or have you already described why you wouldn't want to do that?
That's what o meant. Same persona in Townsquares across various sites. You would recognise me on my site, on your site and John's site.
This is where Disqus comment sections, as shitty as they were, were a real boon to the blogging ecosystem. You'd see the same users again and again across multiple blogs.
Indeed. We knew each other from our handles(still do).
I mean, the web 20-30 years ago was kinda mixed?
You had your IRC, with no message persistence, no image hosting, and no persistent account names (being able to reserve a username was an optional add-on feature). People would show they were away by changing their username from bob to bob_afk.
And it was common for people to use a nickname (for safety) and never show their face (because posting photos was a big effort). A person could be called 'cmdrtaco' or 'hemos' and that was enough, didn't need their real name or photograph or anything.
But you're right that there were also more small forums using things like phpBB which would be dedicated to a single interest, and they were much more human-scale communities. And people could have big signatures and animated GIF avatars, so you couldn't help but remember them!
I hope sites that just provide a way for people to assemble offline will be the new thing soon.
A photography guide's site that rallies amateurs for walk tours. A planning board for a foreign language practice group. A site with a schedule and registration form for a sports event.
When I read "online social" my head thinks "not-really social".
I'm working on a game that helps with this. You leave your little bunker in a post-apocalyptic world and find the land around you contaminated. You walk, run, any workout, to claim territory around you, and gain energy you can use to clean up. You start building greenhouses to grow food and start rebuilding the ecosystem. It's all on the real world map underneath you, and all the interactions between people in the game are cooperative: you get more benefits helping another player with most actions than doing the same thing in your own territory.
The game tricks you into going for walks or runs regularly since you need those energy points for everything, and I'm building out more cooperative behaviors to give you reasons to go walk with someone else, go work together to fight an alien infestation, and more. You'll discover other players in the game who are near you in the physical world, and be able to request help, thank them, give them benefits, all positive.
I've learned a lot from Niantic's strategy, but they've never leaned into actually helping people improve their fitness, or work out together. I'm hoping I can help solve this problem you're talking about, at least for getting people fitter!
> I've learned a lot from Niantic's strategy
What's your monetisation plan and how can we be assured that the data collected won't be used for military purposes?
Oh yeah, that's a good point about them. And thank you, this is a great question. That's another reason I wanted to do this, I don't like what they've become!
Since I do actual workout tracking, all health and fitness data and raw location data stays on device. The only thing I send back to my web service is what interactions you've made with the game world, what you've captured and built. I have no plan to have you take photos of anything, either. I won't have any monetizable data, really.
My plan to monetize is an optional subscription that gives you more capabilities, like having more allies together, being able to build more than one thing at a time, and being able to hold more energy from a workout before your meter caps. If it gets successful I'll definitely do paid cosmetics. I also think there's an avenue for me to get grants from local health departments if I can prove I increase people's fitness through the game, but that would be opt in and way down the line.
I'm a big fan of not growing your company speculatively, and instead proving out your revenue and growing organically.
What else would you suggest? If this ever got big enough for its own corporate entity I think I would bake a lot of protections into the corporate structure, and definitely be a B corporation.
This sounds awesome! I’d love to playtest it when you’re ready.
I appreciate you! I'll come back here and comment soon. :)
Link if I want to stay updated? Sounds cool
Sure! I'm not quite ready to testflight. I'll reply to your comment when I've got a page up. :)
Ping me when you're ready for Android/web users :)
So far I don't know how to solve one problem there, but I'm open to ideas! It's very easy to inject fake fitness data in both of those platforms. With CoreMotion, iOS/watchOS give you a lot of inherent anti-cheat for free.
Would be cool to have an embedded typeform-type widget that compliments disqus that takes the following flow: - are you interested in meeting offline? - which country? - which city? - enter your email to get updates (or check back here)
Then when there’s enough demand, you’re shown meeting spots and times to vote with RSVPs.
The key is the widget has to be embeddable and agnostic of the content so it can manage itself based on sensible rules (only show possible events when there’s enough demand, but make the demand really easy to measure).
Meetup used to be that until they got greedy and started charging everyone. It collapsed very quickly after that. It's a ghost town now.
I tried that, and started with the cheaper host option.
My meetups rapidly filled up with fake people, so real people couldn't sign up ... unless ... I signed up for the more expensive plan.
I gave up on it as a scam, at that point.
Problem is no one visits those sites. Everyone visits the same sources of content robotically, they need to be taken on a random walk by something to find new sites.
Yeah, the internet was originally an extension of the real world, and it probably should have stayed that way.
mom&pop social media is the old thing, and like other mom&pop things that got steamrolled by their equivalents of Walmart, it is highly unlikely to ever return.
95% of people choose utility and convenience over ideological preferences, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I too miss the old Internet sometimes, sure, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'd much rather deal with anonymous strangers or LLMs than ye olde phpbbs with their anal moderation, resident schizos, and weird cliques.
There's no shortage of anal moderation, resident schizos, and weird cliques in show on the "Walmart" communities.
Anal moderation! “I only poop one ounce a day tyvm”
I don't like this argument because it assumes that money should rightfully dictate everything in our lives. Also disagree that there is a "choice" when it comes to consumer spending, as if there are any public options for consumer spending in a neoliberal economy.
If you’re into running, cycling, etc. Strava can easily function in this way and does. I’ve made a bunch of friends and been introduced to groups and routes through my interaction with initial strangers
Ironically in real life most offline activities of these kinds that I know of are facilitated on Facebook groups.
That already exists. It's called social media and people promote real life events there.
Well, most platforms operate primarily as an algorithmic scroll based feed, and the actual utilities (like event planning, or marketplace) are related to second class citizens – used mostly as a hook to get you to stay logged in.
I've had a lot of success lately relying exclusively on Partiful as my one social app. I know it's nearly an inevitability though before they will need to monetize and introduce some way to ruin the elegance.
(My proposal for the modern successor to Zawinski's law: Every social media platform attempts to expand until it has a scroll-based algorithmic content feed).
Distribution, getting people to know that the event exists is the hardest part. Scroll based algorithmic feeds are good at helping you with this.
Fun fact. My wife and I met on something similar in 2006 or so. "My Blog Log" was a sidebar widget that showed other people who we reading that blog. She was in marketing, I was in tech, and it was a blog at that intersection written by Rex Hammock (RIP).
Ohhh, I would love to hear a similar story like that for a couple that met on TownSquare!!!
Reminds me of the old ff0000, sadly no longer active, but this is what it looked like: https://www.reddit.com/r/lost_websites/comments/11lao71/ff00...
I had found it on StumbleUpon. We'd log in with friends and just fly around, explore, punch each other, chat with random people across the world on a surprisingly fluid multiplayer setting that was built to promote a web advertising agency (if I remember correctly).
It was really ahead of its time. The old internet was so fun.
Not sure how this is appealing at all. I see a bunch of stick figures moving rapidly and comments flashing too quickly to read. I gave up as it wasn't obvious at all what to do or how to particpate.
The issue is that my site right now is too crowded giving this post reached a good position on HN.
On regular days, this are much calmer. You can check other sites using the Townsquare on https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/ (fixed link). Check out the map.
Maybe add some geolocation filter for higher number of users? For example, limit number of people to 10 based on closest location
Pretty anti-internet idea IMO
I miss when the Internet was truly global.
I guess for Town Square - if you mean it literally as in locally sure - but otherwise, massively limits the potential of this project.
Ohhh...that's an interesting idea!!! I'll put that on the roadmap, thanks!!!
I can't open that link. seems like no DNS records associated with the site?
sorry! Wrong Link
It's https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/
All I see is disgusting popups - “k-ll j——“, “r-pe n——“ Very upsetting, no thanks to you.
Who wants that on their web site? In some jurisdictions you’re going to be in trouble for facilitating hate and calls for violence (or worse). This is why what you have implemented will not work in its current form. I suggest you move to a system that characters can trigger only standard phrases and emoticons.
That "standard phrases and emoticons" would break the whole idea.
But I guarantee the most of the times, the TownSquare in my site is much calmar and friendlier. People having actually interesting conversations. What you saw was a reflection of the page going FrontPage on HN
Nice bunch of folks we have here, huh?
You have a small amount of idiots everywhere. It requires just one to spam such a system.
Those messages are originating from here and the same thing happens whenever someone shares any type of an anonymous messaging board.
If it was anything like it is now, you really don't want to be reading these comments.
Cool idea but needs rate limit and abuse protection.
There is already a bot spamming hate speech
Haha, I guess having a troll posting nonstop racial slurs is just part of that old web feel...
I'm working on that!
[dead]
Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608570
Really love the idea!
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608570 - June 2026 (166 comments)
I know this is a long shot but I’m gonna try asking anyway because it has been eating away at me.
I remember seeing a website with the same concept as what the OP has done but with gorillas. It was during the early HTML5 and web socket days and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I tried googling for it but nothing came up. Appreciate if anyone can give me a lead.
Was it http://apestronauts.com (which redirects to https://apestronauts.herokuapp.com/)?
http://apestronauts.com exists since 2012, so that seems a decent potential.
Found it by throwing your comment into ChatGPT.
It's a great idea but I've lately adopted the habit of just looking at the code and noting SLOC count. I am bewildered how people today add code like there's no tomorrow, I suppose the advocates would quote "literate programming" and onboarding and what not, but I think reality is showing the code gets the better of us and we're absolutely squeezed by the volume of code that kind of works and kind of doesn't, exhibits issues (including vulnerabilities) and at the end of the day just rots looking at the next kid taking over. And I am not loving it anymore.
20K SLOC for a site widget? There's nothing great about that. But sure -- I guess it works. Everything can be ignored because "it works", but in my experience the gears are bound to start flying sooner or later and someone needs to look under the hood -- whether it's under the hood of Townsquare or something that has long replaced it. And it better be service-able.
I love it, and I just want to say thanks for making this and releasing it. I jumped through the indieweb webring and already stumbled onto another site using it too. Despite what some others have said about the lack of permanence, this still feels like an old web treasure to me even if it didn't exist.
thanks for that message! I made this for the community and this type of response makes me super happy!
Love this!!! Quick feedback: I keep thinking the Disable Townsquare button is a toggle for dark/light theme :/
You and a lot of people. For some reason I've been postponing changing the icon to a ZZ or some sort of toggle... But I also want to I plement a day/night mode for the widget. So I've been postponing the first to do both together.
Anyway, the widget does work with dark mode. But then you need to change the site to dark mode.
Just thought I'd share a quick wholesome update. I felt transported to better times after playing around with this to when I used to spend my time on WinMX chatrooms, IRC, or much later playing a simple flash game called Transformice, or when reddit had RPAN! Strangers are the best!
This is pretty cool. I clicked on the demo but unfortunately it's already running into the inevitable issue of anonymous people typing out slurs and expletives. Maybe have a predefined set of words/phrases people can use?
This is the demo page for others to see: https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/#square
This is the kind of fruit that vibe coding brings! A quick little fun idea that you can just whip up and try out! Without vibe coating it might have just been an idea that got put on a list of ideas and never got to be tried out.
And now it's an open source repo that other people can try out and fork it and see what works and sticks!
I love it!
Some months ago I made this Morse Code Universe where people travel through zones, stumble upon each other, and communicate in morse code.
https://mall.merkoba.com/
All they can do is use morse code to communicate, even the names are assigned automatically. There is a zone map with hundreds of zones, zones with recent activity get a red hue. Secret zones can be unlocked if you happen to use one of the sekrit morse code words.
It's a casual mmorpg/townsquare that is fundamentally safe since the best you can do is focus to type a very offensive word in 20 seconds.
I stumbled upon some random people who visited the site as I was developing it. Taught some the words to enter the secret zones as a game, took them on a tour. Also met a morse code aficionado and we had a little conversation in morse code, eventually met him in another site I have.
There are 6 (!) posts about this in the last 15 days, can we not let it rest a bit?
I swear I have nothing to do with it... :sweat Specially because they get lot's of attention specially when I can't be on the computer and I lose all the fun!
There needs to be some filters on the messages
[dead]
Cool idea. Wish my site drove real traffic instead of bots so I could add this and not confuse/bore visitors :’)
Question for the developer, have you played the Playstation video game Journey?
The spoiler about it is, that while you adventure from one end of the land to another, and you encounter other sort of people looking players, it turns out that those are actually people and, at the end of the game you get a credits roll list with the PlayStation Network handles for each of the players that you encountered. There is no communication other than moving your character. It's delightful.
Anyhow, that subtle engagement is in my opinion quite valuable.
Noo...I never played it and didn't know about it! I'll check it out.
The best social media site I ever belonged to was one that required real names and proof before being allowed to log in. It was for professional and semi-professional in a industry I won't name. The friendliest, most helpful group I've ever known. Arguments were rare. Never any spam or totally weird/stupid posts. Always on point.
cauenapier make left/right button controls for mobile. Also fullscreen in portrait orientation doesn’t really make sense until messages move up in the sky, so that they don’t need to fit in that narrow horizontal space
Reminds me of m favorite late 90s messenger, Odigo[0]. It had some sort of radar which showed you people who were visiting the same site. It sure had this town hall feel, but admittedly most sites were simply empty.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odigo_Messenger
i remember our 90s ISP advertising the use of PowWow[0] as a way to surf the web with other people. I never used it, but it seemed like a fun idea
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowWow_(chat_program)
This is so much fun! Thanks for making this!
You are welcome! My hope was that people had fun and had interesting conversation.
The second part only happens after the HN spike...ehhehe
The comments on your site are just what i expected
Hmm idk, this looks a bit more like serendipity for vitriolic trolls
Well, as I said before. This is usually much calmer. Try coming back some time later, after the Hn spike.
or explore other people's websites that are using Townsquare. Check them out here https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/map
The last time it was dead, maybe 1 or 2 people wandered in and then went to Zzz.
Today it's got tons of people but a lack of moderation. I'm not really sure how you have a meaningful conversation either (maybe it's just because too many people are on there).
I love the idea but all I’m seeing is people saying really explicative things. Hopefully there are better ways of moderating
So many HN users are insufferable crybabies.
WAHHH BAD WORDS WERE THERE
Pathetic community
Your point stands, but this is not exactly an exemplary comment either
In 2001, there was this browser extention showing "walking people" on the webfrontend and you could connect to them
... and run head first into totalitarian 'chat control' regulation all around the globe.
Pure fun. Love it.
Thaaanks! That's the idea! Fun and meet random people.
The experience is quite different from HN spike....but usually is calmer and friendlier.
Personally, all the animations of stick figures moving and jumping is slightly annoying and offers little valuable information. I might enjoy something like showing a person's national flag (for where they are logged in from), or a timer for how long they've been on the site. Instead of the "street" metaphor for the graphic (benches, trees), maybe a Mercator Projection that locates an emoji at each person's location.
Oh, my sweet summer child...
Really cool idea that I'd be reluctant to enable for any of my sites because I assume that it would just be used for people to be awful.
Maybe I'm just still traumatized by Playstation Home? A group of my friends all got Playstation 3s together, and we all decided to try Playstation Home, a town square for people to meet. The group met up and then spent the next few minutes being accosted by one a-hole after another.
Or maybe it's the github issue I had to delete today because of someone being a big, giant jerk.
TBF: I went to this town square and people were civilized, so maybe there is some hope for humanity. ;-)
I still hope for humanity :) I believe in it! We just neeed to ignore the idiot ones that just want to draw attention to them selves.
Anyway...Right now it's just crowded because of the Hn post. But usually it's much calmer, friendlier and interesting. I've already had a lot of interesting conversation there :)
Love the idea!
Feels rather creepy to me …
So make it a public C&C server???
Damn, that demo needs some moderation right now. Some dudes went nuts.
took a spin, pretty cool. Does it record convos? As a site owner, I would want to know what people were chatting up. As a web surfer, I like the anonymity of it.
I've just finished implementing a telegram plugin to it, so you can get notifications when people are chatting there. :) Reach out if you wanna know more.
Would be great as an overlay for a livestream.
I'll check what I need to do to make it happen!!! If you stream and want to use it, please reach out! you can find my email on my site!
kinda similar to the bullet comments flying through screen on the chinese youtube Bilibili
This is awesome
thaaanks :)
Must be nice to be able to take seriously the idea that multiple people might be browsing your site simultaneously… :(
Fun!
People in a town square still have identities. They are just likely to not know each other.
I think this is a significant part of a great idea. What it, and most/all other communication software is missing, is the ability to continue a conversation into a new context. It would be great to move a convo from the public square into a shop, then maybe share contact info to get together another day.
That is actualy giving some interesting ideas. I'm now thinking about permanent identities across websites, as well as some "rooms" where you can enter to have a chat...
I'll need to think this through. I don;t want to overcomplicate the project...Part of charm is the simplicity.
An identity doesn't need to be more than a public gpg key. Anything else is just what they (or anyone, really) say about themselves relative to a given subject.
> People in a town square still have identities. They are just likely to not know each other.
I think that entirely depends on the size of the town. For a big city this is absolutely true, but in a small village you would expect to find at least a few familiar faces.
cool theory
Can we just have the old Reddit back, please?
But then you have to deal with social media regulators and arbiters and be subject to untold liability
Fun! There’s a lot of features there to play with and it acts as a real time view counter.
Interestingly I used it then left without even reading the article
Much more features are coming! Someone pushed a PR for a futball, and I've added cats and custom hats.
Feels like the old web days tbh
cool idea, but the experience was not great. All I see are stick figures rapidly moving back and forth spouting racial slurs
Now this is cool! I'd love to see something like it on most web pages as a way to interact with like-minded people... but then I start thinking about all the ways it's going to be abused and get sad.
I'm the site author and creator of TownSquare. The only moment it got a bit abused it was during the first HN spike. But before and after that, everything was friendly.
Love this idea and your creation of it. Unfortunately do think the parent's concerns are valid - at this moment on your site at least one person has set their name to something offensive so it shows up perpetually (under the street light). Anonymity+connectivity persists in bringing out the worst of our impulses, I guess...
Do you think names are really necessary? Or could they take some other form than text, perhaps unicode chars chosen from a selection of abstract shapes? The wonderful https://www.tunera.xyz/fonts/teranoptia/ comes to mind.
What a big fuckin baby. Go cry somewhere about it
teranoptia looks cool as hell, thanks for sharing!
I think there might be some merit to a basic filter, perhaps some sort of timeout for obvious slurs. I see a few right now.
This is already sort of implemented. But moderation is a very very difficult problem to be solved and there are different philosophies for it...
How about these? - rate limit overall messages, maybe even percentage wise: if some ip sent more than 70% of all messages in the last minute, mute it. - let other users mark/report spam and if three others agree something is spam, block all slightly similar messages for 24 hours? - forbid sending the exact same message more than N times per M seconds. - rate limit color change and jump much more.
Yeah, some of those are good ideas. I'll implement them. Thanks for the contribution! (Instead of just say it won't work, heheheh)
[dead]
[flagged]