The new social

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Terry Nguyen, Dirt's senior staff writer, on MeetUp, The Breakfast, and the rise of community-forward social apps.

Every year or so, like clockwork, a buzzy social startup seems to materialize out of the blue with a confident proposition. It usually has to do with a better, more authentic way of being online. Last year, the app on everyone’s mind (and phones) was BeReal. In 2021, it was Dispo, a photo app that simulated the experience of using a disposable camera by having users wait for images to develop, and then Poparazzi, which encouraged users to take paparazzi-like shots of their friends. 

BeReal, Dispo, and Poparazzi don’t envision a new social media landscape, nor do they want to upend the current hierarchy of consumer social apps. Rather, they’ve positioned themselves as novel addendums to the existing world order. These apps attempt to fulfill a niche function that TikTok, Instagram, Twitter (and so on) aren’t able to offer. In the case of BeReal, it was intimacy and authenticity, mediated via a once-a-day Pavlovian prompt to post an unfiltered photo to a private, ad-free feed. The basis for such an app’s existence, however, largely seems to be reactionary: BeReal markets itself as the antithesis of Instagram. But once the hype subsides and venture funding runs dry, what’s the value-add to keep users hooked?

Recently, I’ve noticed a new kind of app coming to the fore. Their mission is not reactionary to Instagram, though, but to a pervasive Covid-era condition: loneliness. These apps are more social than media, more like Tinder than Twitter. (Partiful can be considered one such example.) Their ethos is in line with a growing impulse, among brands and startups alike, to cultivate and grow community, both online and off. Some platforms fall under the purview of “collective media,” a term coined by a group of startup founders that I find helpful in defining the next wave of social media apps. 

I spent last month working remotely in Lisbon, a city that I had virtually zero friends in. I treated it like a private writer’s retreat, and I loved every moment spent alone in the hilly, temperate environment. (One of the best dinners I had was at Tasca Pete; the owner let me sit solo at a six-top table because a group canceled their reservations last minute. The saddest sight in the world is not of a woman dining alone!) But if I was ever in need of company, I was assured by the fact that social interaction, if I so chose, was just a few taps away. And this knowledge, whether I acted upon it or not, kept most of the anxiety I had about my month-long solitude at bay. While abroad, I relied on two apps: MeetUp, an RSVP platform for in-person events in your city, and The Breakfast, a dating-style app that pairs you with someone you can meet and hang out with IRL. 

MeetUp has been around since 2002. I heard about it months ago from a cinephile friend who used it to meet other film enthusiasts. The platform functions like an interest-based event feed depending on your location, and is a casual way to meet people without committing to a one-on-one setting. I went to a few “digital nomad coworking sessions” (cringe, I know) at a nearby cafe and a tarot workshop hosted at an arts space. There were a surprising number of nightly stand-up shows hosted by expats (I never went), in addition to free yoga classes and a weekly hiking group. 

The Breakfast, on the other hand, is like a subscription-based social app without any swiping—the polished, more professional sibling of Bumble BFF. You have to submit an application before being approved to make a profile. It costs $19.99 a month (or $7.99 a week, if I recall correctly what I paid) to use. Every 24 hours, the app gives you a “chance” and essentially sets you up with another person. If both parties agree to take the chance, you’re able to message each other to figure out a time and place that works.

I ended up getting dinner with my one Breakfast “chance,” which was fine, but I really wanted breakfast. For whatever reason, I was under the impression that the app would streamline the process of setting up a breakfast date. I imagined that I would log on the night before, mark my availability and location, and be directed to a specific time and place to meet with another user who was also available. Instead, I had to go through the awkward process of negotiating a time and finding a spot, which is customary for a date, but for a low-stakes meet-up? I’m not quite sold. Twenty per month is a steep price for a professional-managerial class friend-matching service.

While in Lisbon, I heard about some other new niche social apps I didn’t get to try: Roasters (RSTRS), a Yelp-like platform that caters to coffee enthusiasts and shop owners; Croissant, for remote workers looking for coworking spaces; and Wink, yet another Bumble BFF clone. These apps broadly use the language of “community” in their pitch, promising to engage users, to some extent, with some level of offline interaction. I’m curious what cumulative effect these “new social” apps will have on culture, how it will speed up the digital globalization already happening in gentrifying, remote-work hotspots like Lisbon, Mexico City, and Bali.

As social apps move offline, physical space will become a priority. MeetUp, for instance, is partnering with Common, a co-living platform for short-term renters. Will these platforms help facilitate community, or further silo users into socialized filter bubbles according to their income and interests (which are driven by income)? These apps are, for the most part, built by and for tech-forward, college-educated, upwardly-mobile urbanites. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Come to think of it, the future of social looks more like an IRL playground than a scrollable feed. 

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• Squid Game star and model Hoyeon Jung is a new kind of international superstar. (GQ)

• Adina Glickstein on how AI may be creating more busy work for humans. (Spike Magazine)

• A fantasy internet browser by Nate Parrott of The Browser Company (mentioned in an earlier Dirt blog on skeuomorphism) 

• I’ve been doing research on the history of computational creative writing (a jargon-y term for, I suppose, the more universally acceptable “AI” writing) and came across this old New Yorker blog on Christopher Strachey’s programmed love letter generator, developed in 1952. (Strachey was a colleague of Alan Turing, and computing lore implies that the men were secret lovers.) The machine used a random number generating algorithm to formulate sentences, and is an early example of algorithmic or computational art.

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