The Basics
Squeelr lets you communicate with others in your physical environment by leaving and viewing tiny messages—called "Squeels"—tagged to your location.
Squeels can include images that you take with your camera, or that you've got saved to your Photo Library.
What you say is up to you—as long as it fits within 140 characters.
You may be familiar with other micro-blogging sites like Twittertm—Squeelr is like these sites, with one major exception: there are no user accounts—posts are anonymous
No User Accounts
We've grown accustomed to providing services with logins and passwords, so it may come as a surprise to learn that Squeelr has no logins and requires no password.
It's as if Squeelr is one giant shared blog, with entries posted anonymously by anyone in the world, each one adding their own opinion or insight. If this sounds like it might
be used in ways that do not benefit the public—for example creating something similar to the unsolicited email problem—have no fear, we have a funny sounding solution:
When you first post, you'll be presented with a menu of options:
This will allow you to purchase a pack of 5 or 20 posts (or deletes). By requiring a small payment, we're able to keep bad posters who blanket the system with free (annoying) messages out. We're also able to offer communications without user accounts, allowing you to speak your mind.
Private Posts
Sometimes it's useful to provide feedback to a particular Squeel. We created Private Posts for just this scenario. When you see a message you would like to comment on, simply hit the "Reply" button, and select "Private" when sending the message. This message will get routed to the person that wrote the message, using the magic of the Squeelr network. When you get private messages, you'll receive a message on your device. If you do not wish to receive these messages, you can turn them off in the main system Settings.
Some Details
- Tagging the location of your Squeels is as precise or as vague as you want, and is entirely optional.
- To reload a timeline, tap the bookmark button at the bottom of the screen twice, or give your phone a good shake.
- The Search functionality can search without geographic boundaries by setting the search distance all the way to "Far".
- Private messages are only viewable by the person they are directed to. Your private messages show up in the "Private" timeline, and can be deleted without a fee.
- Tapping on the Latitude/Longitude of Squeels in the timeline will take you to a map view of the location.
Discussion
Why did we make Squeelr? Our epiphanic moment occurred during the 2009 Iranian elections, when many Internet users turned their avatars green in protest. We realized that an anonymous communications system was now needed and possible—so we set out to build one. As the application was constructed, we found that the anonymous nature of the communications provided many new possibilities and challenges. We realized that we could solve many of these problems by charging something—even a tiny amount—for each action. This charge ends up providing an economic disincentive for mass-marketers. Similarly, by borrowing from the "wiki" model, we allow anyone to delete a message. We also realized that to be super useful, you sometime need to get out-of-band (non public) messages; we built the Private Post feature to address this requirement. In making these changes, the system evolved somewhat from its original cryptographically secure anonymous origins—you have to trust Squeelr a little bit—but we think that the essence of what made this an interesting idea survives—there are no public user accounts.
To be honest, we have very little idea how this application is actually going to be used, but look forward to providing support and growing the service with our community.
More Questions?
Still have a question? Find a bug? Want to contact us for some other reason? Send us an email at squeelr@squeelr.com.
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