Treetins – Making Strangers with similar interests Social

What does omegle helps you in? True, it is a best time killer. Chat anonymously, meet strangers and have long chats. But talking about how productive a chat can be, we focus on TreeTins.com. In an interview with Prince Jacob Thomas(the founder of TreeTins), we found some very peculiar and strange facts we didnt knew and on the other hand got to know about what TreeTins is all about. He said that Internet is supposed to connect people and information all over the world had restricted us with our connections. We either have family, friends or colleagues with whom we connect but there is no medium that connects us with complete strangers in a free and friendly manner.  There are two things person X can do when loggin into treetins.com:

1) Express

If X chooses to write a short piece on the way India is responding to politics this year, when he/she posts her expression it goes on to the TreeTins page as an expression by a stranger.

2) Converse

Anyone who reads the post can starts a conversation with her by sending an opinion back to him/her on that article. This can be done truly anonymously.

Say there are two people who have written something back. Ram has written saying Brilliant piece, you should also read this article by Barkha Dutt on her blog Shyam has written Wow you seem to be into politics, me too, think we should connect and meet for sure. What say? In both cases, Ram can choose to accept or decline the person’s thoughts only, but doesn’t know who it is. In this case if she chooses to accept another’s opinion, they both get connected and the identities are revealed 🙂

How to get started

Log into TreeTins via any means. You will see your own dashboard where there is a search box at top of the screen. Click on it and type your interest. Eventually, you will see that someone has already posted something about Internet (suppose you type internet). This person is totally anonymous to you and even if you reply you are totally anonymous to him. When they choose to accept your views, you guys can share each other profiles. Voila. You met someone with same interest 😉

Anybody who joins Treetins starts as a stranger and is not known to anyone in the Treetins world. Conversing with strangers happens only based on a particular expression on a topic of interest and hence it is very contextual. Though it may seem like you are bumping into random people, you can do so only if you have valid and informed opinions on the topic based on which the person has expressed. After this only if the person chooses to accept the opinion, do the two strangers get connected. Hence it is both secure and contextual at the same time.

TreeTins Team

Stating that these guys surveyed 300 people from different places of India manually just to embed the concept in the bed of this startup, surely one cannot neglect the intensity of input concurred by the team. Usually people do not take survey, but seems like they are really into it.  Average time spent on the site by user is close to 25 minutes but the team expects this to increase considerably in the coming future.

Treetins team  took the concept public with  ‘Share Your Table’ initiative, which was received really well by both restaurateurs and customers alike. This is now active in more than 35 restaurants, pubs and cafes in Mumbai and the team has got requests from people in other cities to activate it there as well. This is one of the marketing strategies to be employed by Treetins team to take the concept to masses.

“We kept a jar (like a little jam jar) on the tables in the most popular restaurants, cafes, lounges, bars, pubs and hangouts in Mumbai, with an inverted flag in it. If a customer wants to share his/ her table, they simply put the flag the right side up. It says a simple Hi 🙂 A sign for a stranger to come and share the table”, says Chandy explaining the ‘Share Your Table’ initiative.

Funding & Revenue Sources

Currently, the team has pooled in their own money, along with some help from friends, family and mentors. Chandy hints that they might be looking at a freemium model. The team looks at being ready with revenue model by March which is till when they can sustain ourselves, post which they will approach interested investors for funding.

 TTP’s take on Treetins

After personally trying out the platform for a couple of days, we can say that Treetins lets you connect with strangers based on similar interests, and does not let the strangers disappear like real life or other interaction platforms. The UI is neat. The ability to remove someone from your bench is powerful and gives entire control of stranger conversations to a person.  The team is quick enough to realize that unless an offline component is available, it is very hard to reach out to masses. ‘Share Your Table’  is a unique initiative and we hope to see more people using it. The end challenge would be to get as much traction as possible and get people to spend time on Treetins. We wish the team very best!