The Fridge (YC S10) Takes The Privacy Headaches Out Of Sharing

Another one of "these" sites? If I want to share photos with a small group of people, I'll upload them to a Facebook album and specify the exact names that should see them. If I want to send a message to them, I'll use email, Facebook messages, Twitter DMs, or SMS. I don't need yet another site that friends need to learn about, sign up for, etc before it's actually useful.

I'm confused. The article suggests the site is for private groups of people to share things among themselves, free from privacy concerns.<p>Then the cofounder is referenced (not quoted) saying their goal is to create a social graph across groups by interest.<p>To me that sounds like a contradiction. How is this not selling users on privacy at the outset while intending to "convince" them down the road that privacy was never what they wanted?

I'm glad somebody went and did this. Fundamentally, humans structure their social relationships in terms of groups, though the groups may not have names or be disjoint, and membership may not be binary. I think you guys are on the right track.<p>The biggest question I have is, how do you get people into your site in the first place? I would love to use The Fridge, but if my friends don't, what's the point?

If someone besides me is the gatekeeper to the group, then how is this helping privacy issues? Seems like I would be losing control not gaining it.<p>It does make sense to classify relationships and share based on those classifications, but I bet there is a better way.

Suggestion:<p>Place a demo group on the home page. It's very hard to figure out what this site does from the minimal home page.<p>Make a single click demo group with full functionality, (but reset it every hour or so to avoid it collecting too much spam). Or even better, set a cookie, and new users will always get a fresh demo, which those with a cookie will be able to keep modifying their private demo for a while.

I wonder how they are generating value? The funny thing is that it appears the group based social network idea is in the air right now, and there was even a post on HN by someone trying to make something rather similar (see: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579400" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579400</a> ). Unless they move in first and fast this space will get really crowded.<p>They could make something that exploits their social graph, kinda like Aardvark, but that again is something really long term. So, what is their value proposition in making users join <i>right now</i>?

Privacy and sharing are opposites of each other.<p>When you share something on the internet, you are relinquishing control of it. Someone can always manually redistribute content you create (for instance, saving a photo you share with them). As such, you should never put content on the internet you never want being made public.

I was working on something like this until BrainTrust.io revealed itself on HN. How do you guys differ from BrainTrust.io or DropBox if you are going more file focused?

If your going to go down this road having an open link in which anyone can use sounds like it could cause trouble. Another good option would be to have a list locked down at the start of the group and then require group members to ok people being added. Another idea would be people joining can only see new content.<p>I know this doesn't completely solve the problem but to me unless it was really locked down somehow it doesn't differ enough from what facebook are offering.

Props for not having the usual tired glossy design, or as I call it "page frosting". I don't see any drop shadows or gradients, and just slightly rounded corners :)

I just tried it out a bit and I must say that I think it has potential.<p>Small change I recommend: make the "Add photos and post" button more visible. Now you have to put the cursor in the post field for it to become visible.<p>I wish you all the luck.

Does this site have a backup/export?<p>I might be interested in using it, but startups fail sometimes, and I would not like all my info to be lost if this happens.

Any plans to make this an openid server? It would be a good way to validate groups that other applications that require validation could leverage off.

Seems like FB could just make it a teensy bit easier to create and manage groups and there's no longer really a problem to solve.

Are you guys sharing any invites on HN?

Please make this work without javascript enabled. Even the simple login form doesn't work without it...

Serious question: How will you make money?

austinchang - Are you working on an iPhone app? android? blackberry?

Seems they broke the fridge!