Adding on to this—we had a maps functionality on the EA Hub (eahub.org), but never tried to promote it or saw it as a particularly useful way to achieve the use case of “people nearby want to meet”.
To do that, we launched more advanced search functionality and a “EA Chats” which would have allowed matching on location. That functionality that was not launched, but had some good beta feedback of EA Pen Pals (and the 2015 version of EA Chats).
In general, we consulted closely with local group organizers to build functionality that would help them facilitate connections themselves (they were perhaps the “trigger”).
Unfortunately we were not able to test this out because we decided to retire the Hub before that, but my guess is that either of those versions would have been more robust ways of testing the functioanlity.
Adding on to this—we had a maps functionality on the EA Hub (eahub.org), but never tried to promote it or saw it as a particularly useful way to achieve the use case of “people nearby want to meet”.
To do that, we launched more advanced search functionality and a “EA Chats” which would have allowed matching on location. That functionality that was not launched, but had some good beta feedback of EA Pen Pals (and the 2015 version of EA Chats).
In general, we consulted closely with local group organizers to build functionality that would help them facilitate connections themselves (they were perhaps the “trigger”).
Unfortunately we were not able to test this out because we decided to retire the Hub before that, but my guess is that either of those versions would have been more robust ways of testing the functioanlity.