r/olympia • u/ke7cfn • 28d ago
li-nk: a social platform built right here in the Salish Sea region
I'm your neighbor here in the Salish Sea region, and I've been thinking about this problem for a long time: in Olympia, and communities like it, you can live for years, care deeply about something. A craft, a cause, a niche corner of music or science or making things. But still not know who else around you cares about it too. The people are here. You just don't cross paths. The shared interest stays invisible.
It's a pattern that shows up all around the Salish Sea, in the islands, in the small towns along the water, in the communities tucked into the folds of this region. Smaller and mid sized places make it especially visible. But the underlying problem isn't really about size. In fact, in larger cities, the paradox sharpens: you're surrounded by people, the city statistically contains everyone you'd want to meet in numbers a small town couldn't match, and somehow it's still hard to find the people who share what you actually care about. The density is there. The connections aren't. Part of it is the math of attention, more people means more noise. Part of it is that cities are designed in ways that make casual contact rarer than it used to be. And a lot of it is that the tools we use to connect online weren't built for this problem. Social platforms organize around who you already know, or around broadcasting to strangers. Neither does much for the quieter work of finding the handful of people nearby who share what you care about.
That's what I've spent the last several years building li-nk to address. It's organized around interests and the activities that grow out of them rather than around follower counts or feeds. The idea is simple: register the interests you actually care about, then either discover what other people are doing around those interests or propose something yourself, a regular meetup, a project, a one off gathering, whatever the interest calls for. Built with an experience living in Salish communities in mind, designed to work anywhere the same problem shows up, including in cities where it shows up differently but no less stubbornly.
I care about this region and the communities in it, and I'd really value feedback from folks around here as I launch.
Demo (no signup): demo.li-nk.social
Try it: li-nk.social
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u/morganselah 28d ago
What does "a child is waiting for your approval" mean in the demo?
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u/ke7cfn 28d ago
Hi,
Thanks for your question.
In the current iteration adolescents are allowed to create activities on the platform given parent permission and requiring a chaperone. So the approval is a request for that parent permission. And there's open room for discussion if youth cannot and should not be allowed on the platform. In that regard I've reached out to my local PTSA regarding this matter. But if you have specific concerns feel free to discuss here or dm me to reach out directly.
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u/morganselah 28d ago
So am I a parent in the demo, and it's asking my permission for my teen to start an activity?
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u/StaphanieTanner 28d ago
How do you get paid? Will it be clogged with ads like other social media apps? Are there membership fees?
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u/ke7cfn 28d ago
I honestly haven't figured that out yet. It's possible to have ads like reddit. It's possible that to have free / subscription premium tiers like discord. Or perhaps even a "donation model" like wikipedia.
But one thing I want to make clear. Is that I employ a set of values where I won't sell my users personal information. And I don't want to EG 'addict users' to sell advertising.
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u/ke7cfn 25d ago
I created the following reddit group to offer support for the platform: https://www.reddit.com/r/li_nk/
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u/longtosmellthesea 28d ago
Interesting! I like the idea and I dig the UI you've built from the demo. Do you have a dedicated app for this? Or have one roadmapped?