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In How to Get Startup Ideas, Paul Graham provides the following advice:
Live in the future, then build what's missing.
Something that feels to me like it's present in the future and missing in today's world: OkCupid for friendship.
Think about it. The internet is a thing. Billions and billions of people have cheap and instant access to it. So then, logistics are rarely an obstacle for chatting with people.
The actual obstacle in today's world is matchmaking. How do you find the people to chat with? And similarly, how do you communicate that there is a strong match so that each party is thinking "oh wow this person seems cool, I'd love to chat with them" instead of "this is a random person and I am not optimistic that I'd have a good time talking to them".
This doesn't really feel like such a huge problem though. I mean, assume for a second that you were able to force everyone in the world to spend an hour filling out some sort of OkCupid-like profile, but for friendship and conversation rather than romantic relationships. From there, it seems doable enough to figure out whatever matchmaking algorithm.
I think the issue is moreso getting people to fill out the survey in the first place. There's a chicken-egg problem. Why spend the time filling out the survey when there's few other people on the platform. At such an early stage, you don't actually expect to be matched with someone for whom you're compatible with.
It's definitely a tricky problem. But at the same time, if you "live in the future", do you see this service? I do.
I mean, maybe society is just not functional enough to get it going. That's plausible. But to me, it feels like something where there's just too much demand for it to never emerge. Friendship and conversation are things that are so fundamental, and I think such a platform would do a notably better job at providing each of those things the haphazard, "organic" approach that happens by necessity in today's world. I could even see access to this sort of platform considered a basic human right, given how important meaningful social interaction is.
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?