John Gruber, on the new Mozi app for coordinating with friends when you’re/they’re in the vicinity:

New app, spearheaded by Ev Williams:

Mozi is a private social network for seeing your people more, IRL. Add your plans, check who’s in town, and know when you overlap.

iOS only at the moment, with “Sign in with Apple” as the only supported authentication method. One clever idea is that you can share travel plans and your location, and Mozi will coordinate when you might be in the same area as a friend.

Alright, I’ll bite.

@jarrod reminds me of Retro.app, which is a great app I couldn't get other people to use.

@jarrod I totally get the need, and appreciate that they hash, but I just really don’t like giving my contacts to companies. It just rings all my privacy bells.

@hiro.report I get that. I've got my hackles up about it, too, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt with their clear and straightforward policy.

@jsonbecker Ahh, yeah. I remember that. Perfect description. I think the (one) problem with Retro is that everyone already has a place to post photos. So, it has a significant uphill battle. I don't have anywhere I (semi) publically post my trip plans, so this has a chance to be that one place. But getting people aboard will, of course, be the linchpin.

@jarrod @jsonbecker Any app that needs both parties to be using the app is DOA

@jarrod Oh I’m totally tempted as well, I love the idea of the app!

@pratik @jarrod yup, network effects are basically impossible to generate.

@jsonbecker Ah, good counterexample.

@jarrod I'd consider trusting Mozi, but start ups fail and get sold off, and then suddenly Elon Musk has everyone's address book.

@thinkling.bsky.social True. Something to keep a tuned eye to the ground about.

@jarrod i joined - with all the reservations in this thread ... and like @jsonbecker i kind of feel as if I have been down this route before .. but we will see. When i first saw it I did kinda hope that there was also going to be functionality like Plaxo used to offer - but no. Maybe the future?

// @pratik