Free App Idea #1: Make IRL Plans With Friends More Easily
Here's a free app idea: a calendar that allows people from your contact list to show their availability (e.g., 8p-11p this Friday) and also allows you to share your availability with select categories of contacts. This would enable you to open the app, click on next Friday, and see which of your friends have tagged themselves as free for plans next Friday so you can message them. It would also enable you to open yourself up to be messaged by someone to whom you've made your availability visible.
This would feel like a more social and casual version of Calendly.
Since we don't want to be messaged by just anyone on our contact list, we can group friends into "lists", with availability first being shared with one list of friends, then gradually opening up availability to other lists as our situation changes (i.e., as we grow more desperate). The friends on various lists are private and can be changed at any time depending on the situation. Lists could group friends into a hierarchy, ranked from tier 1 (e.g., best friends) to tier 4 (e.g., acquaintances), or they could be different categories like school, church, volleyball, and karate, with some friends in multiple lists if they overlap categories.
No more scrolling through your contact list a few days before the weekend, scrambling to make plans. No more wasting time and energy blindly messaging a friend just to learn they're already busy. No more sending a few messages simultaneously just to double book yourself and needing to awkwardly back-pedal.
I imagine some interesting second-order social outcomes from an app like this, like what showing tons of availability says about you, or a friend finding out that you're tagged as available next Saturday night for a mutual friend but not for them. New social norms would be born from this.
In 2025, this sort of app could probably be easily made by AI. Here are some app names ChatGPT came up with that I think are actually pretty fun:
- "Friyay" (a fun twist on Friday + yay, implying excitement about planning): Suggests spontaneity, fun, and weekend plans — even if it works any day.
- "Pingk" (ping + link/sync — quirky, fun, and evokes nudging someone to hang): Feels like a sound notification + social tool for syncing calendars. 3."Clique" Evokes social circles and exclusivity — fits perfectly with the "lists" idea.
- "Soonr" (like “sooner”) Implies immediacy, upcoming availability, or the next opportunity to connect.
- "Avail" Short for availability, but also sounds like "a veil" — fun double meaning for revealing your time only to some.
- "Mingl" (mingle + calendar logic): Light, fun, social — great for an app that helps people meet up casually.