Many people seem to be more motivated to invest energy into pursuing romantic relationships than friendships. There are few books about making good friends and many books on dating.
Perhaps. But to the extent that people aren’t motivated to invest energy into friendships, I think there is a sort of latent motivation. Friendship and conversation is in fact important, and so in taking this “live in the future” perspective, I think people will eventually realize the importance and start putting effort into it.
Omegle essentially provided an answer to that question that was highly used. It didn’t do a lot of matchmaking but it might be a starting point.
Gotcha. I think the matchmaking part is essential though. It moves the expectation of prospective users from “I’ll be chatting with a random stranger, and it probably won’t be too great” to “I’ll be chatting with someone who the platform thinks I’m super compatible with. Cool!”
If you want to pursue this as a business, maybe buy the recently shutdown Omegle domain from Leif K-Brooks (who’s a rationalist) and try to switch from chatting to random people to chatting to highly match-made connections.
Thanks for the tip. I’m not interested in pursuing it as a business in the forseeable future, but perhaps in the more distant future. If so, I will keep this in mind.
Friendship and conversation is in fact important, and so in taking this “live in the future” perspective, I think people will eventually realize the importance and start putting effort into it.
What do you think will change in the future that people put more effort into friendship than they are doing at present?
Perhaps. But to the extent that people aren’t motivated to invest energy into friendships, I think there is a sort of latent motivation. Friendship and conversation is in fact important, and so in taking this “live in the future” perspective, I think people will eventually realize the importance and start putting effort into it.
Gotcha. I think the matchmaking part is essential though. It moves the expectation of prospective users from “I’ll be chatting with a random stranger, and it probably won’t be too great” to “I’ll be chatting with someone who the platform thinks I’m super compatible with. Cool!”
Thanks for the tip. I’m not interested in pursuing it as a business in the forseeable future, but perhaps in the more distant future. If so, I will keep this in mind.
What do you think will change in the future that people put more effort into friendship than they are doing at present?