WalkWithFriends

Staying in touch with close friends requires more effort when everybody lives somewhere else on the planet. Scheduling calls to catch up certainly works, but it requires time-commitment, and time zones make scheduling unnecessarily complicated.

After living in NYC for a year, I ended up doing the following: If I walk somewhere for about 30 minutes, I'd text 2 friends or family members, asking if they're available for a chat. Often one of them would end up calling me. This way, no prior planning was necessary, things felt more spontaneous and I was able to use my NYC walking time to catch up.

The problems

If I text a friend Hey X, are you free for a call?, chances are they're at work, asleep, with friends or don't look at their phone. They'd see my message 2 hours later and reply Yep, sure, calling you now. The problem here is that by that time I'm unavailable, as the message is from 2 hours ago.
If a friend doesn't know about this setup, they'd think I want to discuss something specific or urgent, however those kinds of calls are just to catch up and stay in touch.
Often, either none of my friends were available, or multiple responded, so it was always a tricky balance on how many friends I'd text, with the risk of both of them replying Yep, I'm free now
If one friend is never available, you kind of "forget" to text them, as you already assume subconsciously that they won't be available

The solution

A Telegram bot that manages the communication and revokes messages as soon as you're unavailable again.

How does it work:

Say hi to the bot via t.me/WalkWithFriendsBot
You add all the Telegram contacts using /newcontact [username]
You type /free to mark yourself as available
You tell the bot how many minutes you'll be free (this number will be sent as part of the message to your friends)
The bot now sends out messages to all your friends in your contact list, one message every 20 seconds
The order in which the messages are sent is based on when you last had a call with them, to prefer people you haven't chatted in a while
As soon as your first friend hits the /confirm button
You and your friend will be connected
All other invites will be revoked, meaning if e.g. the friend was sleeping during that time, they won't even see that there ever was a message

Why Telegram?

It works on every major platform, including iOS, Android and macOS
It supports revoking of messages and notifications, even from the lock screen
They have a solid bots API
Registration for new users is easy & fast

Website generated using markdown-to-html-github-style Find the source code on GitHub KrauseFx/walkwithfriends

krausefx / walkwithfriends Goto Github PK