How I Set Out to Create My Version of Snap Map a Year Ago

As you’ve probably heard or seen on the popular disappearing messages app, Snapchat, there’s an interesting geolocation update. Users can now see the locations of their friends (that opt in) and what’s happening around them through Snap stories in that area. I was surprised and had mixed emotions about this update, mostly because it validated an idea of mine but also made Snapchat more of a direct competitor in the space I’m trying to break into with my own startup, Panda.

A year ago, I met my cofounder and he told me about a social network project he was working on that was based on interests. He asked me to join him and over the following week I thought long and hard about how we could do social media differently.

I liked the idea of connecting through interests. If users have a genuine interest in the people they interact with, then engagement and retention would surely be high. It’s a great way to get to know the users and provide a highly targeted experience.

Imagine this, you’re out of town, in San Francisco for 3 days. You’ve been in meetings for 10 hours and you want a night out to take advantage of what would otherwise be a work trip. Where do you go? How do you know? Facebook? Yelp? If I have my way, you’d open Panda.

You see that the most active of your 5 interests is Dance. You click on the thumbnail and see users are posting pictures and videos of themselves dancing their little hearts out to Salsa night in the Mission District. You go and without a care in the world, post your own shenanigans after 1 too many margaritas because this is Panda and the entire thread will be gone in 24 hours.

When my cofounder Max and I decided to pursue Panda, we did so in a way that combined both of our ideas. I’ve always wanted a “better” way of finding things to do on a Friday night and Max wanted to create a social network through interests. So we decided to create a platform that would allow users to engage with what’s happening around them based on 3-5 of their interests. We also decided to let threads expire in 24 hours so that users can post freely without feeling like there might be some awkward Thanksgiving conversation about it later.

The way users see what’s “happening” around town is a little different with Panda than Snapchat, of course. Our platform is not organized on a heat map because we felt we wanted to strike the right balance between knowing and understanding our users and respecting their privacy. A heat map just seemed a little too invasive for us. Instead, we opted to require users to pick between 3-5 predetermined interests (Dancing, Craft Beer, Photography, EDM, etc.). Users would then get a newsfeed of geolocated threads that disappear after 24 hours created by other users that fall under those interests. This would allow local businesses a new way to reach an audience that would convey relevant content and a sort of “urgency” to act on.

After first hearing about Snapchat’s purchase of Zenly and the Snap Map update, I was unsure of what that meant for us and Panda, but now I believe we can coexist with Snapchat. We aren’t looking to just show what’s going on nearby. We want the experience to be something users want to engage with. We also don’t want to alienate users with privacy concerns. This may not seem like much of a differentiating factor but we continue to receive encouraging feedback that has convinced us otherwise. I’m actually thankful that such an influential company such as Snap has begun paving the way for a “what’s happening around me now” social network, so that as Panda scales up, we face less of a challenge educating the next potential user.