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Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

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Why I created a social network

A few years ago, I started getting interested in web development because of the great opportunity it provides to make an impact both on an individual and a community level. My first contributions were to the speedcubing community (see for instance the WCA website and repository). I enjoyed the experience so much that I just couldn't resist getting more into it.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I wanted to try and solve a problem that has bothered me for years, which is the apparent difficulty that exists to meet people and make new friends on this modern world. I could go way deeper into this, but it falls out of the scope of this post. So, to address the problem, I designed a social network that basically:

  1. Connects people according to their interests.
  2. Encourages people to go outside and meet others while doing something that they all enjoy.
  3. It's as simple as possible.

In order to accomplish those 3 points, the experience goes like this:

  1. Create a profile, which requires only the absolutely necessary personal information.
    • For example, the gender is not needed at all, so why request that information in the first place?
  2. Select your interests.
  3. Be presented with event recommendations in your area.
    • An event can really be anything: go to the cinema, play a basketball game, visit a museum, attend a hackaton, etc.
    • You are also able to create your own events.

That's the very basic functionality, but there's a bit more of stuff in order to provide a more complete experience:

  • Each event has its own comments' wall so attendants to it have an easy way to communicate with each other.
  • A person can send a friendship request to any other person, which has to be accepted to become friends.
  • Private chats between friends.

And that's it! To build all of that, I used React and Material UI for the front end (hosted on Netlify), Node.js and Express.js for the back end (hosted on Heroku), and MongoDB for the database (hosted on MongoDB Atlas). The code is on GitHub, although it isn't open sourced yet for various reasons, but the plan is for it to be -- I can only imagine how amazing it would be to receive contributions from people as interested on the project as I am!

Please visit Tisn - The introverts' social network and let me know what you think about it on the comments' section below! If there's intereste on the topic, I would be very glad to post more about both the technical and the personal side of it.

Thanks for reading!

Top comments (17)

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insuusvenerati profile image
Sean

This sounds awesome. I’m working on a project with a similar stack using Gatsby, NestJS and MongoDB. For the SSO comment, I’ve been using Auth0 and it has been pretty easy so far. Let me know if you want some contributions. I’d love to help.

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

Do you have a link for your project? :) And thanks for the offering! I'll definitely post it here when the code is open sourced.

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

Hey @insuusvenerati !

I open sourced the project and am dropping the link here just in case you are still interested in contributing:

GitHub logo Tisn / tisn.app

The introverts' social network


Tisn

Tisn - The introverts' social network

Meet people while doing what you enjoy!

Table of contents

What is tisn.app?

Welcome to the tisn.app (or just Tisn) repository! We are very glad to have you here. If you want to help us make Tisn better, this is definitely the place to be!

The primary objective of Tisn is to try and address the problem of the apparent difficulty that exists to meet people and make new friends on this modern world. To do that, our social network:

  1. Connects people according to their interests
  2. Encourages people to go outside and meet others while doing something that they all enjoy
  3. Is as simple as possible

We try to do all of that while being completely transparent and respecting our users' privacy.

Contributing

We…

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johnkazer profile image
John Kazer

I too am building a social network! I'm enjoying learning about graph databases and gremlin query language (linked to an Azure cosmos db). Which I never thought I'd say 😀.
Early days yet though for mine but I'd be very interested to hear more about what you've been doing.

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

That sounds very nice! Good luck and please drop a link to it here when you have it :) Also, if there's anything in particular you'd like to hear about my work don't hesitate to ask!

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szilardszabo profile image
SS

I like your project, would contribute in creating this portal. The only thing is that it does not look great that at the moment you don't have any events. Do you have any plan to fill up your event database somehow?

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

Hey @szilardszabo !

I open sourced the project and am dropping the link here just in case you are still interested in contributing:

GitHub logo Tisn / tisn.app

The introverts' social network


Tisn

Tisn - The introverts' social network

Meet people while doing what you enjoy!

Table of contents

What is tisn.app?

Welcome to the tisn.app (or just Tisn) repository! We are very glad to have you here. If you want to help us make Tisn better, this is definitely the place to be!

The primary objective of Tisn is to try and address the problem of the apparent difficulty that exists to meet people and make new friends on this modern world. To do that, our social network:

  1. Connects people according to their interests
  2. Encourages people to go outside and meet others while doing something that they all enjoy
  3. Is as simple as possible

We try to do all of that while being completely transparent and respecting our users' privacy.

Contributing

We…

Collapse
 
albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

Currently there are only a few events, most of them in Madrid, Spain, and created by me. The idea is for users to create them, but with so few users nothing is being created 😕

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

How about Single Sign On (SSO)?

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

That's definitely on the to-do list!

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sujitagarwal profile image
Sujit Agarwal

Good job for starters. I've joined there but I feel there's a lot more room for improvements in the functionalities.
I'm interested to join your project as a contributor :-) Ping me!

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

For sure there is room for improvement! I'll make sure to post it here when I open source the project :)

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

Hey @sujitagarwal !

I open sourced the project and am dropping the link here just in case you are still interested in contributing:

GitHub logo Tisn / tisn.app

The introverts' social network


Tisn

Tisn - The introverts' social network

Meet people while doing what you enjoy!

Table of contents

What is tisn.app?

Welcome to the tisn.app (or just Tisn) repository! We are very glad to have you here. If you want to help us make Tisn better, this is definitely the place to be!

The primary objective of Tisn is to try and address the problem of the apparent difficulty that exists to meet people and make new friends on this modern world. To do that, our social network:

  1. Connects people according to their interests
  2. Encourages people to go outside and meet others while doing something that they all enjoy
  3. Is as simple as possible

We try to do all of that while being completely transparent and respecting our users' privacy.

Contributing

We…

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egoustou profile image
EGOUSTOU

Salut !
j'aimerais integré dans mon projet de création d'une application sociale une partie de discussions à l'exemple de wathsapp. je n'arrive à le faire. j'ai besoin de votre orientation.
Merci.

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

Hey! I don't get all your message, do you speak English?

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egoustou profile image
EGOUSTOU

Hi!
I would like to integrate in my project of creation of a social application a part of discussions with the example of wathsapp. I can't do it. I need your guidance.
Thank you.

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albertopdrf profile image
Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol

What are you struggling with exactly? Feel free to send me a DM and we can look into it!