Do things when other people aren’t doing them
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UNCROWDEDR
For a few years now, there has been a sticky note at our desk that says “UNCROWDEDR” to remind us (DSN and Jake Hofman) to build an app that tells us when other people are doing things (like going to the movies or coffee shops or grocery stores) so that we can do these things when nobody else is doing them. We liked to call this idea:
- Uncrowdedr
- The anti-social app
- The app that gets less useful as more people use it
- The Andy Warhol
The last one comes from something Jeff Nickerson told us about Mr. Warhol, who apparently liked to do certain things at the least popular times, such as going to movies on Monday. (If anyone knows the reference, let us know).
Good news. Now we don’t have to build it, as our friends at Google have built it into location search results on Android phones.
See the TIME magazine article Google Fixed the Worst Part About Grocery Shopping.
Here’s a screenshot. To see for yourself, search for “blue bottle williamsburg” from the Google search bar in Android (it doesn’t seem to be in map result data yet).
What’s cooler is that data quality/production work on this product was done by one Quang Duong, who was an intern when we were all at Yahoo Research.
