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Skip to main content Toggle navigation Droogkast.Com Home About Us Terms of Use Privacy Policy Anti Spam Policy Contact Us Peanut is a Tinder-like app for making new mom friends February 9, 2017 admin Leave a comment Being a new parent can become an isolating experience, where you’re thrust into a world of playdates over happy hours – a change that can lead to dwindling time spent with friends who share a different schedule and set of priorities. A new app called Peanut , now available on iOS, wants to help. The app connects moms with others like them, who are nearby and interested in hanging out. Yes, it’s sort of like a Tinder for mom friendships. The comparison is apt, given that one of Peanut’s co-founders, Michelle Kennedy, has a wealth of experience from the world of dating apps. Kennedy spent six years at online dating company Badoo, where she worked as General Council and later deputy CEO. She also was involved with the creation of dating app, Bumble – where Badoo is a majority shareholder – advising Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe, and serving on Bumble’s board. Peanut’s other co-founder (and parent), Greg Orlowski, is also familiar with the world of startups, having previously worked as Deliveroo co-founder and former CTO. He left the role last year, and now works in Chicago. Kennedy, meanwhile, is based in London, and the company also has staff in New York. An App For Friendships Using an app to make friends is something major dating apps are now trying to expand into, including with Bumble’s BFF feature and Tinder Social. Like dating apps, Peanut uses a swiping mechanism to connect potential friends – a swipe up will give the other mom a wave, and a swipe down lets you skip their profile. But instead of playing the hot-or-not game, as on Tinder, Peanut focuses on helping users find others with shared interests. This may include things like what languages they speak, or if they work full-time, whether they’re an outdoorsy type, and more. It also displays the age of the children, so you can work to find playdates. Users’ personal attributes are simply buttons you pick from during sign-up, and written in less stuffy language like “mom boss,” “fitness fiend,” “fashion killa,” for example. You can also go into your profile to add or remove these descriptions, if you choose. On the face of it, matching people on interests seems to make sense – if you love shopping and relaxing more than hiking or dancing, you probably want to meet more moms like you. If you work full-time and are always scrambling, you may have troubling connecting with stay-at-home types who spend their days making their own baby food. But this interest-based matching could, in turn, have an isolating effect – keeping friendships constrained to socio-economic bubbles where diversity is lacking. And this comes at a time when people need to better understand each others’ differences. As the political landscape has shown, we’re failing at that. Having friends who think differently can be challenging, but also illuminating. Kennedy disagrees, coming down more on the side of connecting with people like yourself. “I actually think the political climate right now demonstrates the need to hang out and need to connect with women are like-minded and share your values, more than ever,” she says. “If I can make that part a little easier, then that’s a good thing.” A parent herself, Kennedy understands the difficulties in establishing female friendships after motherhood, having gone through the transition herself few years ago with the birth of her son. She found that many of the mom communities today are still a bit “old-fashioned” – often websites, not apps, or online forums. Even Facebook groups, where many moms congregate today, are like a modern take on forums, and not necessarily a place to make close friends. There have been a few newcomers to this space, including UK-based Mush or San Francisco-based Winnie, for example. But Mush has not had pickup stateside, and Winnie is focused on being a Yelp for moms, more than a social community. In other words, there’s still room for an app like Peanut to carve out its niche. The app itself is simple to use, and has a clean, modern design. Nothing takes more than one hand to do, including sign-up, swiping, or arranging meetups with other moms. Unlike on dating apps, where you can end up in go-nowhere chat sessions, Peanut’s goal is to get moms to connect in the real world. When two moms match, you can start a chat right from the match screen. You can also create a group chat in the app, where you’re able to suggest an activity and poll the others for a preferred time. When the poll wraps, you can tap to turn the poll into an invite and another tap adds it to your calendar. Now live, the challenge for Peanut will be user adoption. The app essentially requires users to seed the app with their friends, if outside of one of the large metros. And many busy moms often complain they don’t want to install another app, so Peanut has its work cut out. peanut_750x1334_2 peanut_750x1334_3 peanut_750x1334_1 peanut_750x1334_4 But the team has enough runway to give it a shot, thanks to a larger-than-planned (but still undisclosed) seed round from NEA, Felix Capital, Partech, and other angel investors. Peanut is available today on iOS as a free download. The app is currently in beta with version 1.0 planned for Wednesday. Link : https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/09/peanut-is-a-tinder-like-app-for-making-new-mom-friends/?ncid=rss Twitch launches Communities to help gamers organize around their shared interests February 9, 2017 admin Leave a comment Twitch’s push to broaden the scope of its video game streaming site to include more types of content continues today with the launch of a new section on its site called “Communities.” Designed to cater to users’ unique interests, this section initially contains hundreds of categories, some which build on top of gamers’ interests as well as those that don’t. Here, you’ll find dedicated sections devoted to topics like cosplay, drawing, painting, comedy, food, music and more. Plus, Twitch says users can set up their own communities, if they choose. Of course, many communities will also focus on specific gaming titles, types of gaming, like retro, or activities, like speedrunning. The launch follows a number of changes to the Amazon-owned streaming site over the last year or so, which have put an emphasis on catering to the gaming audience in new ways, while also attracting new users. In fall 2015, the company debuted a new channel called Twitch Creative , which allowed gamers to show off their artistic endeavours – that is, their game-inspired paintings, drawing, songs, costumes and more. It also dipped its toe into TV streaming, by offering classic programs like those from Bob Ross and Julia Child , as well as Amazon’s new TV show pilots. It even launched a “social eating” category to cater to its South Korean users, then more broadly opened up to vloggers through a new category called “IRL.” Given the expanded scope of content on the site today, it’s not surprising that Twitch would now try to organize these many different communities to make them easier to find. But the change is not just about enabling better discovery, users are also allowed to start their own communities, which are then added to the directory listing. “We’ve heard from our streamers and viewers that they want the freedom to form specific groups, organizing around topics such as speedrunning, esports, cosplay, and painting,” said Sheila Raju, Product Marketing Manager at Twitch, in a statement. “With Communities, we are giving our users the power to create groups of their choosing, while providing creators with another tool to expand their audiences. If you have an interest that’s shared among others, Communities is where that collective can live.” These communities can be personalized by their creator, each with their own specific rules, a customiz...