Presence
I'm here
Open the page and you're a dot. That's the whole action. Nothing to write, nothing to fill in.
you, on the map
Lasts while the tab is open
A live map of the people around you. Who's here right now, what they're doing, and what they're offering, looking for, or putting on.
The entire legend
Nothing else needs explaining, ever. Colour carries state, and shape is left deliberately unspent, because it's the axis held back for what kind of actor something is, when venues and events arrive.
What it looks like
Click any dot and their card opens where they're standing. The list beside it ranks whoever is in view; it never shows you a wall of listings, because there are no listings to show, only people, some of whom want something.
How it works
Most neighbourhood apps have one setting: compose something and publish it. That's a high bar for a Tuesday, so the map sits empty and everyone assumes nothing is going on. bluedot has a rung below it, and a rung below that.
Open the page and you're a dot. That's the whole action. Nothing to write, nothing to fill in.
One tap. Optionally a place, optionally whoever's actually with you. Nobody is meant to reply.
A sentence, a photo, or a voice note. Something you're saying to whoever's interested.
Posts
A post carries a mode when there's something to be done about it. There are three, and all of them are optional. A photograph of the canal at six in the morning is a whole post and none of the below.
Happening is the one that makes it a city. Without it, everything gets squeezed through supply and demand, a pickup game comes out sounding like a want-ad, and you've built a classifieds board no matter what the homepage says.
There's no price field, and there won't be. Money stays a sentence. “€120, can deliver” is what people already write. A price column would sort the neighbourhood by what things cost, which is the one change that turns a city into a mall.
The room
One column runs down the side of the map: people arriving with the place they came from, what folks nearby are up to, posts as they're published, and ordinary conversation running through all of it.
The distinction that makes it work at volume isn't importance, it's authorship. Ambient lines can be summarised; nothing anyone typed ever is. Four arrivals collapse into one line. A sentence someone wrote is never merged with another, and never scrolled away by things nobody said.
It's open to everyone. You get a readable handle the moment you arrive, and what you say is kept, so someone landing later reads what happened before they got here. Click any name and the globe flies to them.
Your people
Everything else here is organised by proximity, and the one relationship that matters most ignores it completely. A friend who moved to Lisbon is never going to be in your viewport. So the list has two settings: Nearby, bound to whatever the map is showing, and Friends, which is your people wherever they are, live ones first, with what they're up to beside them.
Direct messages need an accepted connection, so the private half of the app is opt-in on both sides while the map stays open to everyone. The exception is a post: leaving one is consent to be asked about it, and a stranger who goes unanswered gets exactly one message, not a thread they can keep filling.
What it deliberately doesn't do
Continuous location plus an activity history is the most sensitive thing an app like this could hold, and it's exactly what a product talks itself into collecting. These are the lines on the other side.
Your coordinates are rounded off in your browser before anything is sent, and other people are shown a place name, “Berlin, DE”, never a number.
Doings expire after a few hours instead of piling up into a record of where you've been. What accumulates is what you're into, not where you were.
Every doing is a deliberate tap. Nothing asks for your location on arrival, and precise location is a button you press, not a default to find and switch off.
Signing in with Google stores an address only so a returning account can be matched. What everyone else sees is the handle, name and avatar you chose.
Message someone about their post and they get a single message quoting it. If they reply, it's a conversation. If they don't, that's the end of it.
Posts have no pin of their own. They're reached through whoever left them. One person is always one dot, however much they're carrying.
Questions
No. You can open the map, see who's around and talk in the room as a guest. You're given a readable handle like lime ostrich on arrival. Signing in with Google gets you a profile, a face you can keep, connections and direct messages.
It asks, and only if you press the locate button. Nothing prompts you on arrival. If you'd rather not, your rough area is estimated from your connection instead, which is city-level at best. Either way the coordinates are rounded off before they leave your browser.
No. Your position is snapped to a coarse grid in your own browser, so an exact point is never sent to the server and never reaches anyone else. What people see is a place name.
They stay. Your dot goes hollow to show you've gone home, but the post is still there and still reachable through your profile. Posts are kept until you delete them; what runs out is their place on the map, not the post.
Selling is one of the things happening on it, the way a shop is one of the things on a street. There's no price field, no categories and no listings to browse. You browse people, some of whom happen to want something.
People you've accepted a connection from, and anyone asking about a post you left, and they get one message unless you reply. That's it.
One click, no account. If it's quiet where you are, that's the honest state of a map that only shows people who are actually here.
Open the map