[HN Gopher] Recreating YikYak with Postgres
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Recreating YikYak with Postgres
Author : AJRF
Score : 34 points
Date : 2020-07-14 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (adamfallon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adamfallon.com)
| realbarack wrote:
| Nice post! I love hacking around with PostGIS. While I'm not
| normally a huge ORM advocate I do like the GeoDjango API for this
| sort of thing [0].
|
| There hasn't been enough experimentation with geospatial social
| applications. (There was a lot back in the early 2010s but it
| petered out.) I'm currently working on an experimental chat app
| that creates Slack-like channels associated with a topic and a
| location. I'm looking for collaborators on this project (primary
| need is for designers and community-builders, but also
| programmers) so if it appeals to you please get in touch (HN-
| facing email in profile).
|
| [0] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/contrib/gis/
| sennacy wrote:
| Interesting post! I also recreated YikYak as a side project and
| had to solve a lot of similar problems (It's called Clacku on the
| iOS and Android app stores if anyone cares). Managed to get a
| decent chunk of users to actually use it.
| dmlittle wrote:
| Nice! I hadn't heard about R-Trees before. I guess you can
| potentially make do with a quadtree[1] but it seems R-Trees are
| better suited for geodetic data.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadtree
| asdff wrote:
| It's so weird how yikyak blew up then rapidly failed. I used it
| pretty heavily in undergrad and popularity didn't seem to wane
| during that school year when it got big. It just died over the
| summer since you were geolocked to your hometown, then it
| inexplicably never picked up again the next school year, just
| dead on arrival. Had they let people still use their collegiate
| yikak while off campus for the summer, yik yak might have been a
| juggernaut by today. I still don't think the niche has been
| captured: an anonymous, hyperlocal twitter/reddit hodgepodge,
| fueled solely by original and genuine campus memes and therefore
| immune to corporate ad peddling like global networks. Maybe
| that's why it failed.
| newen wrote:
| For a while and probably until it died, they actually did allow
| you to use your college yikyak when you were away. I think you
| could use two locations, your current location and your "home"
| location. It died overnight because they forced everyone to
| have usernames one day. Probably because they wanted to
| monetize.
| brightball wrote:
| I thought I remember them being hammered by authorities due
| to anonymous posts and I think identity was designed to try
| to combat it.
| AJRF wrote:
| Yep - YikYak did let you do this after a while, but if you
| check the subreddit for YikYak they rolled this change out
| along with a feature that meant you had to give or an email or
| phone number IIRC. Huge backlash and people stopped using it.
|
| I tried to solve this in Ottr but letting a "Explore". They
| could open a map, drop a pin and that would be their new
| location. If they posted while "Exploring" their post would be
| marked as such.
| implying wrote:
| There was a lot of social/cultural issues with YikYak. My
| college explicitly forbid using it, and a lot of other small
| colleges had similar policies, largely because of abusive posts
| happening on the platform.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| I know they ended up working with high schools to limit
| access in certain areas. But I'd be really suprised if a
| college could legally forbid using the service.
| ponker wrote:
| Anything anonymous is destined to implode from toxicity unless
| it's very actively moderated.
| dvt wrote:
| Very interesting, and good intro to Postgres R-trees! I kind of
| miss YikYak, it was pretty fun to see all the posts around UCLA.
| If it focused a bit more on promoting good content (and not just
| mindless noise, which eventually turns into edgy racist garbage),
| it might still be around.
|
| (As a side note, I've always wanted to give MongoDB geospatial[1]
| queries a try. Wonder how they compare to Postgres' offering.)
|
| [1] https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/geospatial-queries/
| AJRF wrote:
| Hey - I'm the author (I self-posted this, I hope that isn't
| against the posting etiquette here).
|
| I wrote this post after a bit of a failed startup I tried making
| at the start of lockdown. It was called Ottr and it essentially
| aped YikYak exactly. I made a react web app, an API with web
| sockets (it had real time posting and comments) and even an iOS
| app.
|
| I burnt out on it and gave up because it seems so hard to get
| that initial traction.
|
| I've been trying to get the project posted publicly on GitHub for
| a while now but I wrote maybe 10k+ lines with literally zero
| tests because I was just trying to get it to market. The code
| isn't bad but i'd feel bad posting it without tests so that's
| what i'm working through now.
| thedirt0115 wrote:
| Don't be afraid to put unfinished code or code without tests up
| on GitHub -- just mention in your README that it's not
| production-ready yet or something. It still has educational
| value for the community. Maybe someone will even help you write
| tests! Btw, thanks for sharing -- I had never heard of the
| R-Tree data structure before.
| AJRF wrote:
| I really should just do this. So there are a few parts (API,
| App, Web, DB) to it - I wonder what is the best way of
| representing that? Just have the same readme with links out
| to the other projects maybe?
| newen wrote:
| Don't know if they're still up but I remember there were a
| bunch of yikyak clones around the time it stopped being
| popular. Just weren't enough people in any of them, so I
| stopped them. Network effects and all.
| compsciphd wrote:
| yikyak failed even with significant funding, why would you ape
| it exactly?
| AJRF wrote:
| So I had a bit of a theory (it's stupid I know - you don't
| need to tell me) that meant that YikYak was to Ottr as Vine
| was to TikTok - as in;
|
| The idea behind YikYak was so good it was ripe for someone to
| come along and play of the nostalgia that I (and many of the
| people I know) for it. YikYak came along when I was in first
| year of university and it absolutely blew me away with how
| inventive the idea was. I had so much fun with it, and people
| were creative and funny on the app.
|
| There is something about it that tickled that tribal part of
| your brain because it felt like you were part of a big
| community (but not too big that you feel alone). Seeing a
| post about your actual friend on the feed from someone
| anonymous was so engaging.
|
| Lockdown seemed like such an opportune time to release a
| hyperlocal social network, but I spent so much time tweaking
| it and trying to make it perfect, but I didn't know how to
| make people actually use it (I still don't know).
|
| I had Ottr in a working state, but i've made peace that it is
| solely a learning experience for me, and a fun one at that!
| (until the burnout of course)
| Raphaellll wrote:
| If someone is looking for a YikYak replacement, consider
| Jodel
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