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u/Top-Animal-6996

I built a friend-making app where matches expire in 15 minutes. Solo, took me a year. AMA on the matching engine
▲ 1 r/IMadeThis

I built a friend-making app where matches expire in 15 minutes. Solo, took me a year. AMA on the matching engine

https://reddit.com/link/1ti0n3u/video/175cxehfu52h1/player

I wanted to make new friends online and realized there's no real app for it. You either add people you already know, or roll the dice on random-stranger sites. So I spent the last year solo-building WeLynk: an app that figures out who you'd click with, gives you 15 minutes to decide, and has things to do together that aren't just chat.

The matching engine is the part I'm proudest of. It doesn't ask for interests, age preferences, or any profile questions, and it doesn't read your messages. It learns from what you actually do in the app: who you add, who you don't, which conversations you stay in past the timer. Each match is a 15-minute window. Add each other inside it, or you can't match again. In my own data so far, after 10 to 15 matches it gets dialed in, and from there roughly 1 in 5 matches turns into someone you end up talking to for 2+ hours.

There are also 10 multiplayer games I built, and I tried to make each one feel like its own thing instead of 10 reskins of the same template. Imposter is a noir ticket dispenser. Chalk is a literal chalkboard. Flare has a Japanese card-game aesthetic. There's also Snake for 8, red-light-green-light, a Would You Rather with player-written prompts, and a few more. Plus the usual chat stuff: 1:1 and group chats, voice and video calls, voice notes, GIFs, stickers.

Bot and spam filtering and age-segregated matching are in from day one. It's free. The only money thing is optional cosmetics (pfp frames, message textures, animated pfps) if you want yours to stand out.

Try it: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/6758581880 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.welynk.app Web: https://welynk.com

Genuinely curious what you think about the 15-minute window. Too short, too long, about right? It's the part I'm still iterating on. Happy to AMA on the matching engine or anything else, will reply to everything.

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u/Top-Animal-6996 — 12 hours ago
▲ 2 r/roastmystartup+1 crossposts

WeLynk: friend-making app with 15-min match windows and 10 multiplayer games. Looking for early users to try it and give feedback

I wanted to make new friends online and realized there's no real app for it. You either add people you already know, or roll the dice on random-stranger sites. So I spent the last year solo-building WeLynk: an app that figures out who you'd click with, gives you 15 minutes to decide, and has things to do together that aren't just chat.

The matching engine is the part I'm proudest of. It doesn't ask for interests, age preferences, or any profile questions, and it doesn't read your messages. It learns from what you actually do in the app: who you add, who you don't, which conversations you stay in past the timer. Each match is a 15-minute window. Add each other inside it, or you can't match again. In my own data so far, after 10 to 15 matches it gets dialed in, and from there roughly 1 in 5 matches turns into someone you end up talking to for 2+ hours.

There are also 10 multiplayer games I built, and I tried to make each one feel like its own thing instead of 10 reskins of the same template. Imposter is a noir ticket dispenser. Chalk is a literal chalkboard. Flare has a Japanese card-game aesthetic. There's also Snake for 8, red-light-green-light, a Would You Rather with player-written prompts, and a few more. Plus the usual chat stuff: 1:1 and group chats, voice and video calls, voice notes, GIFs, stickers.

Bot and spam filtering and age-segregated matching are in from day one. It's free. The only money thing is optional cosmetics (pfp frames, message textures, animated pfps) if you want yours to stand out.

Try it: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/6758581880 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.welynk.app Web: https://welynk.com

Genuinely curious what you think about the 15-minute window. Too short, too long, about right? It's the part I'm still iterating on. Happy to AMA on the matching engine or anything else, will reply to everything.

u/Top-Animal-6996 — 12 hours ago