See how many other people are currently on the same page as you

See how many other people are currently on the same page as you ↦

A neat idea:

turven is a tiny widget that shows how many people are currently on the same page as you, for “warm fuzzy feelings” purposes. There’s something cool about seeing that there’s another soul out there, somewhere on our little blue planet, who’s reading the same thing at the same moment ✨

In practice, I’m not sure if it’ll make us feel less lonely or more lonely:

You’re the only person in the whole world on this web page right now. Why not invite a friend?

I guess it depends on which web pages you frequent…

Discussion

2020-07-07T10:55:15Z ago

Hey everyone! turven is open-source (view source on GitHub) and available to all to install on your own website.

I quickly built this prototype in an evening after having a flashback of hit counters from the early 2000s (anyone else remember seeing little country flags next to IP addresses?) 😄

I’m not sure where turven is going next, but I feel like there are many ways it could be expanded:

live chat between people currently on the page
persisted comments for the page (kinda like guestbooks from the early days of the Internet)
a browser extension?

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to check out this submission!