Ever wanted to get in touch with, become friends with or share with fellow commuters while travelling around the system? Well now theres an app for that, it’s called Train Social.
Train Social, is the brain child of Aladdin Moukhallalati who came up with the idea of being able to communicate and get to know your fellow commuters during his daily commute from his home in south western Sydney in to the heart of the city.
“It’s so boring on trains. I wanted to find a way to connect,” Moukhallalati said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. He said people were consumed by their smart phones and rarely spoke with others while they made their journey.
“During peak hour, everyone is face-deep in their phone. We call it ‘glow face’,” and that “Being able to provide a platform … to speak without that awkwardness and anger on a train is what I was trying to achieve.” Moukhallalati said.
Moukhallalati developed the app over a two-year period with the app, which is available for both Android and iOS, now live and available for download in their respective app stores.
Train Social, which basically is another social based app, which taps into people’s desire to get caught up in the tech world. Users can sign up and share what information they like and see who is online, based on their distance from users nearby.
Features include ‘Who’s Online’ which can find other users nearby based on your line and train service as well as estimating and guessing how many metres a users might be from them as well as the ability to share their thoughts with fellow commuters, give also heads up on any potential delays (even before transport operators [i.e Sydney Trains] may inform you) and photos as well.
“Like other social media, you have to send a chat request to talk with someone. And it’s up to them if they respond,” he said.
The service is only available for Sydney commuters, but Mr Moukhallalati wants Train Social to be expand to both Melbourne and Brisbane train services as well as potentially overseas, to help make Train Social become the biggest Australian social media app on the market.
Train Social is available to download from Google Play for free and if you use the T1 Western, Northern & North Shore Line in Sydney, keep an eye out for me!
So instead of staring down at our phone catching up on emails, chatting with/messaging friends, playing games, reading a book/comic, watching a tv show or movie or simply just enjoying some music we should instead be staring down at our phone ‘engaging’ with some randoms whose only link to us is that they happen to be on the same train?
Does anyone really want this? (aside, of course, from the type of person that you wouldn’t want to be stuck on a train with in the first place!)
So this is like Grindr, but for trains.
I wonder how much harassment I’ll get on this app when I wear my burqa.
Also, what’s stopping old creepy women from hitting on my highschool daughter in school uniform and long white tube socks?
Definitely an interesting idea. Whether it has any safety issues for “vulnerable” passengers remains to be seen but yeah, I’ll be interested to see whether this gets any traction.