Superb, a new application from the founders of Y Combinator is launching today to people to connect in the offline world. Essentially a “Hot or Not” for local places, users swipe through a list of venue suggestions, including restaurants, bars, museums, parks, and more, registering their interest. Afterwards, they can see who among their network, meaning friends, friends of friends and beyond, also want to go to the same places and can then coordinate an outing.
Superb is a social networking app that has places and their images inbuilt. You can just share the place you want to go and then it’s visible to your friends and also the friends of your friends, so you can just start up a chat with the people who have similar intrests.
How It Works
We’ve tested the app and it is fairly simple to use. As noted above, there’s an element of something like Hot or Not or Tinder in the user experience. After signing up, you’re presented with images of places. The company pulls venues suggestions from Foursquare and photos from Instagram. You then swipe in one direction to indicate your interest, or in the other if the place is just not for you.
There isn’t much information on the place’s card itself, but if you say you’re interested in visiting that place, you’re then presented with a screen showing the others in your network who are wanting to go. That network, to be clear, isn’t just your Facebook friends or those from your address book, but also friends of friends or others on the Superb network.
Facebook and Foursquare is either ‘I’m here now’ or ‘this is what I did in the past, Superb is all about future intent,that makes Superb different from other social networks.
While the concept also has some overlap with something like Meetup you have to join groups, RSVP for events, and then when you arrive, sometimes only half those who said they’d go will actually show up. Superb, meanwhile, leaves the planning process to you.
People who have already been using found that the interface was better for indicating interest, but didn’t really eliminate the awkwardness of the initial outreach to a friend of friend or stranger – though, of course, people are becoming more comfortable this with kind of thing thanks to the numerous chat and dating apps out today. Still, someone has to be the first to begin chatting.
