I went on a Pokécrawl and all I got was this lousy Bulbasaur

“This is going to be awesome,” I thought to myself as I climbed the steep grade up to the statue of Hidalgo in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores Park. I was there for a Pokécrawl, you see, but after a week of local news stories and Twitter hype, all signs pointed to it being a circus. And who doesn’t love the circus?

It was supposed to huge. Even within the scope of the current Pokémon Go craze, the San Francisco Pokécrawl slated for last Wednesday night was expected to be a massive event. More than 9,000 people confirmed their attendance to the organizer’s Facebook page, while 24,000 more expressed interest. The crawl was touted as being so enormous, in fact, that it would have two starting points — one in the Mission, the other along the Embarcadero waterfront — to avoid overtaxing the local infrastructure. I attended the Mission crawl, half-expecting the event to be chaperoned by the whole SFPD, given that nearly one percent of the entire city’s population was scheduled to attend. Turns out both estimates were wrong.

The plan was simple: Show up at 6pm and be ready to crawl at 6:30. When I arrived a little after 6, there were already more than 200 people at the meeting point — every single one of them staring intently at their phones. As I reached the summit of the incline, I turned to see hundreds more streaming up the hill towards me, each of them with eyes downcast as they hunted their digital quarry. People arrived as singles, in pairs and in groups, yet upon reaching their destination, many appeared oblivious to the larger event going on around them, instead seeking a clear patch of turf or bench corner to stake out until the real action started.

Some would occasionally scan the crowd for friends, calling out and waving if they spied someone they knew. But for the most part, people kept to themselves or their personal cadres rather than reach out to strangers. It seemed, even knowing that everyone around them was currently engaged in the exact same activity with just as much enthusiasm (I mean, we all took time out of our Wednesday night to show up), there wasn’t much motivation to be neighborly.

That’s not to say people were hostile — aside from that one jackass who accused me of “stealing” a bulbasaur he was attempting to capture. In fact, I spoke with a few delightful folks, one of whom taught me the secret to evolving an Evee into a Vaporeon (it’s all in the name), but for the most part, people kept their guards up.

As the bottom of the hour drew near, the crowd swelled to more than a thousand. The Northern face of the hill swarmed with trainers, curious onlookers and cosplayers as gaggles of local news crews hustled from shot to shot, pestering attendees with banal questions about the game. A few uniformed police officers mixed in with the crowd, though neither they nor the trainers appeared in overwhelming numbers, as earlier estimates predicted. The most the crowd stirred was when a couple good samaritans arrived at the base of the hill with a cooler of free miniature Hagen Daaz cups. And when the clock struck 6:30 pm — nothing.

Nothing happened. There were no trumpets, no loudspeaker announcement, no doves released as harbingers of the world peace that our common love of Pokémon Go would surely deliver. Barely anybody even looked up from their phones.

When it became clear that the event’s organizers were not going to step forward and lead the masses of humanity that they had gathered, the crowd began its exodus. We all had the crawl’s route map from the Facebook announcement, we knew where to go and eventually where to end up. But without that leadership, the event spontaneously and effectively ended. The individual groups that arrived all began to shuffle off the hill towards the Castro and Mission districts. Even groups headed in the same direction failed to coalesce.

I was rather expecting a 1,000-plus person mob steamrolling through the city in search of Mews. I was hoping to see the sense of shared thought and purpose — at least a hint of the camaraderie that people have recounted online. Instead, I saw a crushingly familiar scene: countless people willfully ignoring one another in favor of what was happening on their phones. As the various cliques within the crowd diffused into the surrounding neighborhoods, it became nearly impossible to tell the hoards of trainers from everybody else.

By 7:30, the Pokécrawl to end all Pokécrawls had become just another Wednesday night in San Francisco.

Talkshow offers the ability to host your own AMAs

A few months ago, a messaging app called Talkshow debuted with an interesting premise: all of your conversations on it are public. Everyone can “listen in” on the chatrooms you create, sort of like podcasting but in text form. One of the ways it differentiated itself from Twitter is that strangers can’t just butt into the discussions — they have to be invited. Otherwise, they could only offer canned responses. Now, however, outsiders can participate in a more engaged way, thanks to a new feature called Q&A.

Michael Sippey, one of Talkshow’s co-founders, says that the feature was born out of users holding impromptu Ask Me Anything sessions. But the only way for the audience to chime in was to be promoted to co-host, where they can say anything they want. They could then be removed from the discussion, but adding and removing these guests can be a hassle. The new feature, however, lets viewers submit questions and/or responses, which the host can review before allowing them through. It’s like a moderated comments section, but in real-time.

The Q&A feature is entirely opt-in, and is something that a host can toggle on or off. The default prompt is “Ask anything,” but you can customize it to whatever you like, such as “What’s your favorite Pokémon” or “What’s on your holiday wishlist.” Hosts and co-hosts can see all Q&A submissions, but only the host can decide what to publish. If a submission is accepted, the person who sent it in will get a push notification. You can then end the Q&A at any time during the conversation.

“It’s audience engagement, but more controlled,” says Sippey. “It keeps the host in control of the show.” He envisions that the feature will be used in AMAs of course, but he also foresees people using it for interviews or audience polling. “It’s a way to get feedback.”

“It’s going really well,” Sippey says about Talkshow’s progress since its launch. “People who are sticking around are really enjoying it.” When asked about the rise of public chat apps — Public is another one that debuted recently — he attributes the popularity to a general hole in the market. “Twitter is not great at ongoing conversation; the timeline is a very difficult place to navigate a particular topic,” he says. “Facebook is mostly for friends and family, not for public conversations.” An app like Talkshow, however, fills that void. “If people are good at it, it can be entertaining content.”

Right now Talkshow is sort of a mix of media — journalists have used it for event liveblogs — as well as community discussions around topics such as Pokémon Go. “Sometimes they’re not producing it for anybody but themselves.”

“Is it media? Or is it a chat product?” he queries rhetorically. “We’re straddling that boundary right now.”

Cyanogen Inc. founder says company isn’t focusing on Android apps

Cyanogen Inc.’s co-founder, Steve Kondik, says the company isn’t “pivoting to apps” despite reports that it’s laying off 20 percent of its staff to change focus. However, Kondik didn’t deny the job cuts in his post on the CyanogenMod blog and even admitted that the company had its “share of stuff which just didn’t work at all.” Unfortunately, that also means he didn’t discuss what’s next for the company or clarified what’s going on behind the scenes, though he promised to post more info on its website soon.

What he did say is that Cyanogen Inc. will continue sponsoring CyanogenMod’s development, which makes sense since Kondik is also the person behind the community project. The Android-based open source mobile platform is a separate entity from the retail variant Inc. offers its customers. While it has always been maintained by a community of developers, Cyanogen Inc. plays and, from the sound of things, will continue to play “an active role in its development.”

Source: CyanogenMod