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Work · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to Anonymously share short messages and photos with people around you

Hello Hacker News! In the past few weeks I've been working on a side project that allows you to post anonymously a short message and a photo that is tied to your location. Other people can see posts around them in a radius of 1 kilometer. Posts are ephemeral and disappear after one day. That's all. It started as an exercise to try to write a geohash index and to try nodejs and Redis. I'm not sure if/how it could be useful. Maybe it could be used as a quick way of sharing something with someone next to you, or to leave a reminder for someone at a specific location. Or it could be abused…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Anonymously share short messages and photos with people around you launched in 2015; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1MH

    Hey HN! I just published https://meet.hn, a map to find hackers in your city. How it works? Demo of the signup process: https://x.com/meet_hn/status/1834918518904746329 1. Fill the form: username, city+country 2. Copy the text generated in the box below the form, and paste it in your HN description. 3. Click "Add me on the map" Optionnaly (it's recommended!) you can add links to your socials as well as some tags to showcase your interests. Why does it exist? I created this because, despite its harsh reputation on the internet, I love the HN community. I…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Easiest way to share anonymized Facebook posts.

    2015 · threadshots.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Rando▲96

    Send a random photo, GIF, or quote. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Connect to the buzz near you, anonymously!

    2017 · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    A small alternative to Slack

    2017 · totaljs.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6
    Anonyme▲59

    Anonymous blogging.

    2014 · anonyme.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7SI
  8. 8CS

    I have just launched a project that has been sitting on my hard drive 80% finished for the better part of a year. http://www.chatroulettespy.com It detects your 'anonymous' chat partner's IP address and performs a geolocation lookup on it to show the user the partner's approximate location on a map. I know the Chatroulette fad has peaked a long time ago (when I started this project), but there are still many people using it and its many clones. It was important for me to follow through on this one and not let it die on my hard drive like many projects before. I would appreciate any feedback…

    2011 · chatroulettespy.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9DS

    Hi all, about a month ago my wife was complaining about how annoying all of the photo sharing services were. Either the UI was overly complicated or it would ask people to register for the service before they could view the photos, etc. So I decided to build something dead-simple that she could use. There are no frills. You just create an album and email it around. The link goes directly to the photos. It's not fancy at all (very utilitarian), but she appreciates it, so I thought I'd launch it as a full service and share it with people. It's called SimpleNeat…

    2013 · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hi HN, I’ve been building a small social network where the feed is always chronological — newest posts come first, always. It’s not 100% algorithm-free (there’s still basic filtering to avoid spam or abuse), but the core idea is that every user has a real chance to be seen, even with zero followers. It’s lightweight, works well on mobile, and supports both posts and comments. Most of the content is currently in Portuguese, since it started with a Brazilian audience, but the interface is mostly language-neutral. I’d love any feedback on the concept, UX, performance, or anything else. Thanks!

    2025 · qqpost.netlify.app · its alternatives →

  11. 11AM

    TLDR: I built a "quick and dirty " private social network for my friends, posted on Reddit and HN, got some interest so now have built it properly along with my brother. site link: https://intimost.com/login/ demo creds: [email protected] Demo123! Full version: I needed a social network where I can just send updates and nothing else. So I built it, my friends liked and now I have built it "for the world". Everything is private by default. - Text-only updates - No likes. Only views to acknowledge a post - [in development] Comments are private between the poster and…

    Oct 2025 · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hey all, we're reposting from our previous Show HN about 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28644205 Since then we've grown to more than 5k users across nearly 1k groups and have sent out more than 100k update prompts. The premise is simple - social media stinks and you either don't see updates from people you care about (they never post) or you miss the updates (flooded by other people's updates or an algorithm that downplays an update you'd care about even if it's seemingly unimportant). And we're ramen profitable (more so now that we've migrated the majority…

    May 2026 · togetherletters.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13HM

    I made this as a pair programming exercise with o1-preview. o1 did most of the heavy lifting, through high level prompts, but eventually I needed to diverge from it to get to completion. My initial prompt was: --- I'm making a web app: It's like 4chan, but each thread starts with a gps coordinate. People can only post text and images. I want to build it with flask and sqlalchemy. I want just the backend and data model that supports these threads, anonymous users, and users that can register a permanent username. Write as much of it as you can for me. --- This produced a fully scaffolded…

    2024 · mapchan.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Shushh▲12

    Send and recieve messages completely anonymously

    2024 · shushh.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    I got tired of creating a new email account, or setting up (and paying for) a Google Workspace every time I launched a side project. All I wanted was a link I could put on my site that lets someone send me a message and have a conversation. QuickPing gives you a shareable URL (like quickping.dev/to/yourproject). Someone visits it, types their name, email, and a message. You get notified and reply from a dashboard. They get an email with a link back to the thread. No chat widget, no embed code. Just a link you add to your site. Built with Next.js, Neon, and Mailgun. I'm using it for…

    Jul 2026 · quickping.dev · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Every message you send, every file you share — it all lives somewhere. In your chat history, on a server in a data center, in a backup you forgot about. We’ve become accustomed to our digital lives being recorded by default. I wanted to challenge that. I wanted a way to have a quick, private conversation online with the same finality as a whispered secret. A digital equivalent of a note that you burn after reading. This led me to create TrashTalk.me, a free web app built on a simple, powerful idea: your conversation should never have happened. What is TrashTalk.me? TrashTalk.me is a…

    2025 · trashtalk.me · its alternatives →

  17. 17HA

    Hello HN! Here's my November Startup Sprint project (coded in two days). http://hackerlunch.com It allows you to post your lunch plans and lets other hackers join you. I built this because I often see HN users are interested in meeting each other if they are in the same area. I am not a coder, so this version is very rough. If people use it, I will work with others to build a more polished version. I would love some feedback. What do you think? Is this something you will be using?

    2010 · hackerlunch.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hey HN, First time posting here. Go easy on me, haha. I made Focus with strangers, a site where you can do pomodoros alongside some random people online for a hit of social pressure. There's a simple todo list built in, and you can chat (or 'shout' as I like to call it) with other participants during the break. If you don't like the idea of interacting with randoms, you can send a link and work with your friends as well. No logins/accounts, free to use. Made using elixir + phoenix, hosted on fly. Any feedback would be welcome!

    Oct 2025 · focuswithstrangers.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19AW

    I've tracked the top 3000 subscribed (and some subreddits that I visit frequently) subreddit's active user over time, so you know when to post to get the most feedback! I come from a nodejs background, and this is the first time coding with Go, so the structures might not be standard. But feel free to give me any feedbacks!

    2024 · redditdb.info · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    share moments with people nearby without the noise

    Jan 2026 · gethivemind.net · its alternatives →

  21. 21AF

    https://github.com/inoda/private_journal Built this to use myself, and I'm curious if anybody would be interested in using it. I'm also wondering if anybody has tips to make it more secure (I'm super super new to encryption and whatnot). The security is probably a bit overkill since chances are that nobody cares about what I'm journaling, but it is fun to implement from a code standpoint.

    2019 · its alternatives →

  22. 22GA

    Hi HN, About two months ago, I was inspired by the events that began to unfold in Tunisia, Egypt, and then elsewhere, as everyday people started using the internet to organize revolutions against despots. I was amazed at their courage, using sites like Facebook which forces them to use their real name, or twitter which uses an account that can be easily tracked back to them. I thought that if there was a way they could use a site to communicate with a large audience, anonymously, they might be a bit safer. Graffitly is my attempt at that site. It's my first ruby on rails app, and there is…

    2011 · its alternatives →

  23. 23
    Drift▲2

    Share a real moment with someone far away

    Feb 2026 · global-post-card.lovable.app · its alternatives →

  24. 24CP

    Hi hackers, long time reader, first time "real" submitter. This is by no means a revolutionary idea, or even execution, but rather something I've always wanted to do, just to see if I could write a good implementation of it. So without further adieu: http://ca.pitali.st/ Yes, it's just an URL shortener. Please check out the API and if there anything you like about it, please share, so I can take this feedback with me to my future projects. If there's something you REALLY hate, that's feedback too. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings; this was put together in less than 4 hours to see if I…

    2011 · ca.pitali.st · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →