Outernet turns your saved posts into real-world adventures
Outernet turns your saved posts into real-world adventures
Outernet 将你收藏的帖子转化为现实世界的冒险
Danielle Egan and Athena Leong know how to have fun. Between the two of them, they’ve organized a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco and turned a viral prank into an exclusive NYC restaurant for a night. They even created an alternative to a running club for socializing, dubbed a “sit club,” where people just bring their chairs and relax. Now, with their new startup, Outernet, the co-founders want to help others add more fun to their lives, too.
Danielle Egan 和 Athena Leong 深谙如何享受生活。她们曾联手在旧金山组织过全城寻宝游戏，也将一场病毒式传播的恶作剧变成了一晚限定的纽约独家餐厅。她们甚至还创造了一种社交跑步俱乐部的替代方案，被称为“坐着俱乐部”（sit club），人们只需带上椅子，坐下来放松即可。现在，通过她们的新创公司 Outernet，这两位联合创始人希望帮助其他人也为生活增添更多乐趣。
The app’s name is inspired by the concept of using the internet as a tool to get you to go outside, hence “outernet.” It’s one of several apps that helps you save the things you see online — like local events, restaurants or bars to try, or other city landmarks — and turn them into a list of to-dos for exploring the world around you. Outernet’s pitch is that instead of simply liking a post about something you’d like to see or do on social media, you should share it to its app, where it will track the activity or place you want to visit in an organized interface. (Invite codes to try the app for yourself are at the bottom of this post).
这款应用的名字灵感来源于“利用互联网作为工具让你走出户外”这一概念，因此得名“Outernet”。它是众多能帮你保存线上所见内容的应用之一——比如当地活动、想尝试的餐厅或酒吧，以及其他城市地标——并将它们转化为探索周围世界的待办事项清单。Outernet 的核心理念是：与其在社交媒体上仅仅点赞一个你想看或想做的事情，不如将其分享到该应用中，它会在一个井井有条的界面中追踪你想参与的活动或想去的地方。（本文底部附有试用该应用的邀请码）。
What makes Outernet different from others in the space, like Albo, Tabi, or Plotline, is who’s behind it: founders who have devoted much of their time to playfulness and having fun offline. Now, they want to bring that same spirit into their app.
Outernet 与 Albo、Tabi 或 Plotline 等同类应用的不同之处在于其背后的团队：创始人将大量时间投入到了线下的趣味活动中。现在，她们希望将这种精神注入到自己的应用里。
“In my free time, I’m very passionate about getting people to go outside and do things,” explains Egan, whose offline persona is quite different from her former day job working in product BizOps at LinkedIn. “I just love capturing attention in unexpected ways and delivering delightful things.” She says the thesis behind the app is becoming the “motivation engine for IRL” — something that removes the friction between wanting to do something and actually going out to do it.
“在业余时间，我非常热衷于鼓励人们走出户外去体验生活，”Egan 解释道。她在现实生活中的形象与她之前在 LinkedIn 从事产品业务运营（BizOps）的工作大相径庭。“我就是喜欢以意想不到的方式吸引注意力，并提供令人愉悦的事物。”她表示，该应用背后的核心逻辑是成为“现实生活的动力引擎”——消除“想做某事”与“真正出门去做”之间的阻力。
Outernet taps into an already common consumer behavior. As you scroll TikTok and Instagram, you’re often inspired by a creator’s post, so you’ll save it in the app as a reminder. But then you promptly forget about the idea as you continue to consume more content. Outernet solves this problem by keeping track of the things you want to do or places you want to visit, all in one place.
Outernet 捕捉到了一种常见的消费者行为。当你刷 TikTok 和 Instagram 时，经常会被创作者的帖子所启发，于是你会将其保存下来作为提醒。但随着你继续浏览更多内容，很快就会把这个想法抛之脑后。Outernet 通过将你想做的事或想去的地方集中在一个地方进行追踪，从而解决了这个问题。
To save a post to the app, you’ll tap the share option from the source app, like TikTok or Instagram, then scroll through the list of places you can share to until you find Outernet. You can also paste social media URLs or website links directly into the app, or upload a photo of something you see, like a flyer. To organize everything, Outernet leverages AI to pull relevant information, like the date, time, location, and details about the activity you want to try or the location of a place you’d like to visit.
要将帖子保存到应用中，你需要点击源应用（如 TikTok 或 Instagram）的分享选项，然后滚动分享列表找到 Outernet。你也可以直接将社交媒体网址或网页链接粘贴到应用中，或者上传你看到的照片（例如传单）。为了整理这些内容，Outernet 利用人工智能提取相关信息，如日期、时间、地点以及你想尝试的活动详情或想去地点的具体位置。
Events are saved to a chronological feed, which you can revisit whenever you’re looking for something to do. Other activities without a date, as well as places you’d like to visit, are organized into separate tabs within the app. You can also save events to your Apple or Google Calendar or view them in Outernet’s map.
活动会按时间顺序保存到信息流中，当你寻找要做的事情时，可以随时查看。其他没有日期的活动以及你想去的地方则被整理在应用内的不同标签页中。你还可以将活动保存到 Apple 或 Google 日历，或者在 Outernet 的地图中查看。
The app can also send proactive reminders and nudges that encourage you to go do the things you’ve saved. Then, as you explore places in the real world, you can “stamp” them as such, building what will eventually become a passport documenting your activities.
该应用还能发送主动提醒和推送，鼓励你去完成已保存的事项。当你探索现实世界中的地点时，可以进行“打卡”标记，最终构建出一本记录你活动的“护照”。
“We’re thinking of different ways of creating maybe some sort of like passport book where you can look at all the things [you’ve done] and maybe share that with friends and get some sort of sense of pride of that,” Egan says of future product plans. They’re also thinking of using traditional gamification techniques to encourage activity, like giving out stamps when you reach different milestones.
“我们正在构思不同的方式，比如制作某种‘护照本’，让你能回顾所有[已完成的]事情，或许还能与朋友分享，从中获得成就感，”Egan 在谈到未来产品计划时说道。她们还考虑使用传统的游戏化机制来鼓励用户参与，例如在达到不同里程碑时发放印章。
The idea for Outernet came out of the co-founders’ experience designing a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco, called “Pursuit,” which began three years ago and is now held annually. The monthlong game drew participation from about 1.5% of San Francisco’s population during its most recent run. As the founders chatted with participants, they found that people didn’t get involved because they loved scavenger hunts or adventure games; they just wanted an excuse to go outside. This sparked an idea.
Outernet 的创意源于两位联合创始人设计旧金山全城寻宝游戏“Pursuit”的经历。该活动始于三年前，现已成为年度盛事。在最近一次举办时，这场为期一个月的游戏吸引了约 1.5% 的旧金山人口参与。在与参与者交流时，创始人发现人们参与并非因为热爱寻宝或冒险游戏，而仅仅是想要一个出门的借口。这激发了她们的灵感。
“We just realized that people really have an appetite for doing things, like going on adventures. This is the new trend,” notes Leong, whose background is in computer science and child development, before she landed a job in adventure game design.
“我们意识到人们确实渴望做些事情，比如去冒险。这就是新趋势，”Leong 指出。她在进入冒险游戏设计行业之前，拥有计算机科学和儿童发展背景。
“There are so many incredible community events, and being community organizers ourselves, we’re very plugged into that scene,” Egan adds. “What’s so hard is there are these boots on the ground — incredible community organizers who are hosting these amazing events, and they just don’t know how to reach people because marketing and grabbing people’s attention is such a different skill set. And that’s something that we are exceptional in. So we see ourselves as the conduit,” she says.
“有太多精彩的社区活动，作为社区组织者，我们非常了解这个圈子，”Egan 补充道。“困难在于，那些在一线辛勤工作的社区组织者们举办了很棒的活动，却不知道如何触达人群，因为市场营销和吸引注意力是完全不同的技能。而这正是我们擅长的。所以我们将自己视为连接的桥梁。”
Outernet’s app has been on the market for roughly two months and is already profitable from its premium subscription ($6.99/mo or $39.99/year), which lets you save more items per day. It has around 18,000 users in total, and the team is experimenting rapidly with new ideas. The founders are now having casual conversations with investors about their next steps, but finding the right fit is key. “We want to bring on investors — if we do — [who are] people who are really aligned with us,” says Leong. “We’re whimsical, and we have to find investors that match.”
Outernet 应用上线约两个月，已通过高级订阅服务（每月 6.99 美元或每年 39.99 美元，允许用户每天保存更多项目）实现盈利。目前总用户数约为 18,000 人，团队正在快速尝试各种新想法。创始人目前正在与投资者进行非正式交流，探讨下一步计划，但找到合适的合作伙伴是关键。“如果我们要引入投资者，我们希望他们是真正与我们志同道合的人，”Leong 说。“我们很有奇思妙想，必须找到与之匹配的投资者。”
Outernet is invite-only and available on iOS, with an Android waitlist. TechCrunch readers can use the invite code “coffeewalk” to skip the waitlist.
Outernet 目前采用邀请制，支持 iOS 系统，Android 版本正在排队候补中。TechCrunch 的读者可以使用邀请码“coffeewalk”跳过候补名单。