Show HN: Seven39, a social media app that is only open for 3 hours every evening

[mklyons]

I built this site as a quick test if a time boxed social media experience feels better than an endless one. So far I've just been using it with friends and it feels nice, but it seems like it is time to bring it to a larger audience.

Let me know what you think! It is just based on EST for now, sorry.

[simonkagedal]

I think it's a really cool idea. I signed up because I had a brain fart and thought that "EST" was "European Standard Time" (I was of course thinking of CET).

So yeah, the current window wouldn't work for me, but that's fine. Everything doesn't have to be for everyone. We all live in our bubbles anyway; creating artificial rules could actually be ways of creating new, unexpected interactions.

This being said – if you were to adjust the rules to accommodate more people, I don't think it should be "open from 7:39 to 10:39 in whatever your local time zone is", because that feels like it would just destroy the whole idea – that everyone is there at the _same_ time. Also, it would still exclude people who work evenings.

An alternative solution would be to have multiple windows. For example, if you have one starting at 7:39 PM EST and another one at 7:39 AM EST, there would be more chances that there is some time during the day for people around the globe to check in. Depending, of course, on many things: time zones, sleep habits, work schedule, ability to briefly slack off during work, etc. It would remain true to the idea while opening up for some more people. Just a thought.

I also think each window could be smaller, maybe like just one hour?

[josephg]

> So yeah, the current window wouldn't work for me, but that's fine. Everything doesn't have to be for everyone. We all live in our bubbles anyway; creating artificial rules could actually be ways of creating new, unexpected interactions.

I like the idea that something like this could be open for 3 hours in the evening local time. Like, you'd get totally different communities coming on at different times, and having completely separate experiences together. But some other people would bridge the gap.

While you're online, every hour some people would be forced to leave and some other people could join.

[shaky-carrousel]

An isolated subdomain for each timezone, with no way to interact between them, cet.seven39, est.seven39, etc.

[jofzar]

I think a good alternative would be it's open twice, 7:39am and 7:39pm.

Makes it available for other regions but also the same (silly) idea.

[leke]

I think there could be different sites for different continents like https://www.seven39.eu

[sschueller]

Why not let the user pick the 3 hour window and not let them change it for another period after it was just changed?

[croisillon]

now i want to see a map with all timezones called EST but meaning something else in each one

[stronglikedan]

A window based on region is like free load balancing.

[bazmattaz]

Why not allow the user to start a “session” at any time of day and then they only have 3hrs from that time

[deadbabe]

You could also just use a different time zone each day.

[caseyy]

I wish someone made social media where everyone gets one post every day. Almost no person on this planet has more than one bit of news to share daily with their extended social network — probably not even the countries' leaders. When accounts share every 10 minutes, it's often spam or some inorganic agenda.

Oversharing in natural social networks is penalized heavily, and for good reason - with too much noise and little signal, people get overwhelmed, fear missing out, and cannot agree on anything. Communication becomes a detriment and a chore to the social group. The social group expects everyone to think before they speak, not just blabber endlessly, which is healthy.

Also, replacing the "Like" button/signal with a "Thanks" signal would be good because it'd be better to build a social network based on what people find helpful rather than on what people approve of. I think this was originally Jack Dorsey's idea, not my own.

[furyofantares]

Going perhaps even further in this direction, the 3 hour window could shift by an hour every day. All the other solutions I see to the time zone problem are pushing the idea in the opposite direction, back a little toward normalcy, and have their own problems anyway (eg power users who just run multiple accounts and are the ones doing a lot of posting).

A shifting window would be even more "slow internet". Of course it would be a different vibe; you'd have stuff to catch up on the days it's in prime time for you. As-is it seems like it'd have more of a real-time vibe.

[nicce]

First we create the problem with modern social media and then we solve it with old-school forums.

[Waterluvian]

I love this idea. The eclipse is coming around again. Don’t miss it!

[SoftTalker]

Yeah I have thought about websites having "business hours" also. So support staff don't have to worry about getting a call or text message at 0200 that something isn't working... just fix it in the morning.

[ac29]

I recall this occurring with college registration websites ~25 years ago. In retrospect, I suspect it was so students registering online didn't have an advantage over those registering in person (at the time, home internet access was common but nowhere near 100%).

[jwalton]

One of the largest camera stores in the US is https://www.bhphotovideo.com/. Since B&H was founded in NYC by Orthodox Jews, you can’t event place an order on their website on Saturdays.

[INTPenis]

Some Swedish government agency websites and services do this, for the reason already mentioned, to avoid having to monitor the service or maintain it during out of business hours.

But this social media actually reminded me of old phone line BBS. I believe life was better when we had to wait for our enjoyment, and even stand in line for it.

[kyledrake]

One of the most popular sites hosted on Neocities would be closed on Mondays, so you would have to come back to see the site. https://melonking.net

[ambarp2]

I literally can’t place Costco Mexico orders and perform other tasks on Sundays because payment gateways are down (?). It’s quite frustrating. If it fails every weekend, they should in fact just shut down.

[eru]

This sucks for anyone in a different timezone.

[sureIy]

What's wrong with having different hours for website and support? Even restaurants have different hours for drinks, food, and overall opening times.

[adolph]

B&H famously closes online checkout weekly: Online Checkout Open 24/6

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/StoreInfo.jsp

[KurSix]

Until someone inevitably creates the -24/7 premium access- tier.

[solardev]

Several US and state government sites are like this, e.g. https://freakonomics.com/2012/08/this-website-only-open-duri... or https://old.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/rbl4qz/only_the_us_...

...and that was BEFORE the layoffs =/

[danpalmer]

It's an interesting idea, but if it's only open at a convenient time for a particular group, it's going to lack diverse and worldwide perspectives, and those are important for building a welcoming ecosystem. I doubt giving each timezone its own 3 hours would work, but perhaps rotating the 3 hours each day so that it's anchored on a different timezone would encourage that diversity of content and perhaps even encourage creating connections across timezones.

That said, if you've had success with it in a friend group, perhaps that suggests it's a nice mechanism for a group chat app, rather than for a public social media site?

[nicgrev103]

I wish someone made a social media site that has no news feed or any feed, like the facebook of old. Only get notifications and updates from actual people who you have friended. I genuinely think this would be popular, it wouldn't drive the engagement that the feeds and algos do but it would be a more wholesome experience the one we all bought into at the dawn of the social network, only for our friends to be swapped out for a constant drip of 'engaging' content.

[improbableinf]

Great idea, but it should be open 24/7 with eight 3-hour windows. One account can only use a single window during the 24-hour period. This will handle the timezone differences.

[huevosabio]

Ahhhh a friend and I created a similar idea for startup weekend back in 2014.

It was called Let's Get Weird.

App would open only from 11p to 4a

You were be able to chat and share pics only with nearby people

Selfies were upside down, because why not

At the end of the day period, pics, chats every thing got deleted and it was a blank slate the next day

[duxup]

When I lost my job the local unemployment office website would “close” outside of real world office hours.

I thought that was annoying but also amusing.

I do really like this idea.

If anything I want more limited, but also more genuine social media.

[mklyons]

My college's class scheduling website also had hours of operation. One of the rumors was that it would stop students from drunkenly dropping all of their classes, but the real truth was that it was based on an old system that needed to process things overnight and they couldn't get funding to modernize it. This was UMD -- it was notorious when I was there for being annoying but still cracks me up.

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I do think it could have some cool dynamics but that is what I'm testing right now.

[jug]

I know a bank in Sweden that does _not_ do this and apparently runs various batch jobs at something like 1-3 am. So, one night I made a transaction to it and it looked just fine in the app, then it was mysteriously gone in the morning! On the receiving side; my cash had still been withdrawn! I called the support and we eventually realized that no, you shouldn't do transfers at 2 am on a Saturday because it's likely to fail and then we have to wait for the weekend to be over for them to reappear. I was like... "Alright, thanks. But maybe you should close your app these hours..."

The software engineer within me shudders at the thought of running batch jobs in production while there are ongoing transactions, and where conflicts can and are fully expected to happen.

[kortilla]

The US social security administration site did (and still might) do this as well.

Likely to enable batch processing in the evening without dealing with sync issues

[ripped_britches]

Federal EIN registration site does this as well

[askmike]

Reminds me of MSN back in the day. When I was a kid, there was a big trend of rushing home after school to log into this chat messenger on the computer, everyone would be online for a couple of hours at least.

[doublerabbit]

Home from school at 4, tv for an hour, pc at six then dinner at 7pm and bed at eight.

I miss the MSN days.

[falcor84]

This might be an appropriate time to recommend Cory Doctorow's "Eastern Standard Tribe", which is set in a world where people are separated into subcultures based on the time of day they're most active at, regardless of geographical location.

[FrequentLurker]

Time zones are a problem. It will be 5am for me next time this will be open which is too early but since it opens for 3 hours, I might be able to check in for the second half of the remaining time.

[locusofself]

I've definitely considered trying to create a social media website that only allows you to connect with, say 150 people (Dunbar number), and only allows you to make one or two posts per day.

[xnx]

Sounds like a variant of the "BeReal" concept: "Its main feature is a daily notification that encourages users to share photos of themselves with friends in their day-to-day life, given a randomly selected two-minute window every day."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeReal

[deadbabe]

I have thought about this concept of websites only available at certain hours, but for people's more prurient interests...

Imagine something like OnlyFans except instead of being accessible 24/7 for anyone to see at any time, it's only accessible at very late hours, possibly midnight to 4 AM, etc, in your time zone or whatever time zone you wish. In some cases, your content might only be available on certain days of the week.

A neat side effect of this is that if for instance you have a respectable job, but also want to do some debauchery online on the side, no one can simply go see your stuff without respecting the time zone. That means employers aren't going to be looking you up during business hours or your grandma isn't going to accidentally open up links in the middle of the day leading to your spicy content. Stalking someone online becomes a little more complicated because you now have to wait for their content to become accessible. And if someone does see your content, you know it's because they put in the effort to be there when it opens, which can be embarrassing for them to admit.

We take it for granted that information about someone is constantly available online once posted but I think the next big trends is going to be these sort of inaccessibility controls, that are not based on money.

Before you go trying to make this a business though, keep in mind a big player like OnlyFans can just make this a feature in a weekend, if they haven't already.

[xtrimsky1234]

I think there is an idea there, but this obviously won't work. Here are some large drawbacks:

* timezones, most of the world is not on EST. If you make it per timezone, then not everyone will be on at the same time.

* 7.39 to 10.39 is not practical for everyone even on EST timezone. I go to sleep at 8pm, this means that I avoid screentime 7-8pm because of blue light. We all have different schedules, I tend to only use my computer during the business hours. In the evening I want to spend time with my kids, not be on social. Even if your social network would have a reward, for example 100$ a month to use it from 7.39 to 10.39, I would decline.

Some food for thought:

* Make the time open only based on a user selection. For example I would chose 9am to noon. Only allow switching time once a month. Clearly display a schedule of when most of your friends have selected a time, so that if I see that actually a lot of my friends have chosen 1 to 4pm instead, I can switch to that.

* Most likely after this comment, I will never see your site again. I would suggest adding a demo or a video, for people logging in outside of the hours, to entice them to come back when the site is open.

[a13o]

I don’t think volume of engagement is the main issue with social media. Rather, it’s the scope of access. Social media exposes us to too many people and we forget their humanity. Instead of information spreading across the globe along a lattice of trusted relationships, it teleports through bias-confirming wormholes.

Funny enough, the time zone restriction acts as a crude proxy for locality and slightly scratches the itch; more than the time window does.

[gsky]

"Opens in 35h+"

On what planet a day is 35h long?

[mtillman]

I love internet concepts like this. Just silly fun experiments. This one appears to exclude anyone in a relationship in almost every US timezone.

[bluebarbet]

Great effort.

But I will make the obvious point that does not seem very fashionable these days. What if we chose instead to cultivate self-discipline? This project is a technical fix to a human problem, but human problems can also be addressed with human solutions. Is there no value in doing things the time-honored way?

Personally, I'm not addicted to social media but I do have a sweet tooth. The classic hack here is not to have sugary things in the home, or only in such small quantities as to neutralize the problem. But these technical fixes are expensive. Restaurant desserts are poor value compared to an industrial-sized pot of Nutella, consumed slowly.

Well, I've discovered that, with practice and determination, and of course some rules about quantities and time windows, it is in fact possible to resist temptation, even when it's sitting right in front of me all day. Personally, I find this human solution to be liberating and empowering.