This is the demo page for others to see: https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/#square
> The goal wasn't to build another social network.
> It was to bring back a small feeling that the web used to have: the sense that there are actual people on the other side of the screen.
> Town Square is intentionally tiny and forgetful. There are no accounts, no profiles, no follower counts, no permanent chat history. Messages exist only while people are there to read them.
A photography guide's site that rallies amateurs for walk tours. A planning board for a foreign language practice group. A site with a schedule and registration form for a sports event.
When I read "online social" my head thinks "not-really social".
The game tricks you into going for walks or runs regularly since you need those energy points for everything, and I'm building out more cooperative behaviors to give you reasons to go walk with someone else, go work together to fight an alien infestation, and more. You'll discover other players in the game who are near you in the physical world, and be able to request help, thank them, give them benefits, all positive.
I've learned a lot from Niantic's strategy, but they've never leaned into actually helping people improve their fitness, or work out together. I'm hoping I can help solve this problem you're talking about, at least for getting people fitter!
My meetups rapidly filled up with fake people, so real people couldn't sign up ... unless ... I signed up for the more expensive plan.
I gave up on it as a scam, at that point.
95% of people choose utility and convenience over ideological preferences, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I too miss the old Internet sometimes, sure, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'd much rather deal with anonymous strangers or LLMs than ye olde phpbbs with their anal moderation, resident schizos, and weird cliques.
And now it's an open source repo that other people can try out and fork it and see what works and sticks!
I love it!
On regular days, this are much calmer. You can check other sites using the Townsquare on https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/ (fixed link). Check out the map.
I miss when the Internet was truly global.
I guess for Town Square - if you mean it literally as in locally sure - but otherwise, massively limits the potential of this project.
> nslookup cauenapier.townsquare.com
Server: 192.0.2.42
Address: 192.0.2.42#53
server can't find cauenapier.townsquare.com: NXDOMAINI had found it on StumbleUpon. We'd log in with friends and just fly around, explore, punch each other, chat with random people across the world on a surprisingly fluid multiplayer setting that was built to promote a web advertising agency (if I remember correctly).
It was really ahead of its time. The old internet was so fun.
All they can do is use morse code to communicate, even the names are assigned automatically. There is a zone map with hundreds of zones, zones with recent activity get a red hue. Secret zones can be unlocked if you happen to use one of the sekrit morse code words.
It's a casual mmorpg/townsquare that is fundamentally safe since the best you can do is focus to type a very offensive word in 20 seconds.
I stumbled upon some random people who visited the site as I was developing it. Taught some the words to enter the secret zones as a game, took them on a tour. Also met a morse code aficionado and we had a little conversation in morse code, eventually met him in another site I have.
Really love the idea!
Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608570 - June 2026 (166 comments)
The spoiler about it is, that while you adventure from one end of the land to another, and you encounter other sort of people looking players, it turns out that those are actually people and, at the end of the game you get a credits roll list with the PlayStation Network handles for each of the players that you encountered. There is no communication other than moving your character. It's delightful.
Anyhow, that subtle engagement is in my opinion quite valuable.
The second part only happens after the HN spike...ehhehe
The experience is quite different from HN spike....but usually is calmer and friendlier.
Really cool idea that I'd be reluctant to enable for any of my sites because I assume that it would just be used for people to be awful.
Maybe I'm just still traumatized by Playstation Home? A group of my friends all got Playstation 3s together, and we all decided to try Playstation Home, a town square for people to meet. The group met up and then spent the next few minutes being accosted by one a-hole after another.
Or maybe it's the github issue I had to delete today because of someone being a big, giant jerk.
TBF: I went to this town square and people were civilized, so maybe there is some hope for humanity. ;-)
Anyway...Right now it's just crowded because of the Hn post. But usually it's much calmer, friendlier and interesting. I've already had a lot of interesting conversation there :)
or explore other people's websites that are using Townsquare. Check them out here https://townsquare.cauenapier.com/map
Today it's got tons of people but a lack of moderation. I'm not really sure how you have a meaningful conversation either (maybe it's just because too many people are on there).
People in a town square still have identities. They are just likely to not know each other.
I think this is a significant part of a great idea. What it, and most/all other communication software is missing, is the ability to continue a conversation into a new context. It would be great to move a convo from the public square into a shop, then maybe share contact info to get together another day.
I'll need to think this through. I don;t want to overcomplicate the project...Part of charm is the simplicity.
I think that entirely depends on the size of the town. For a big city this is absolutely true, but in a small village you would expect to find at least a few familiar faces.
Interestingly I used it then left without even reading the article
Do you think names are really necessary? Or could they take some other form than text, perhaps unicode chars chosen from a selection of abstract shapes? The wonderful https://www.tunera.xyz/fonts/teranoptia/ comes to mind.