About Ingle.
Social media, slowed down.
Ingle is a social platform built on different rules. Four rooms — Kin, Tribes, Stage, Journal — each with its own pace and physics, plus a post box for slow correspondence. No algorithmic feed, no streaks, no infinite scroll. You decide when to show up.
Why it exists
Most social platforms optimise for time-on-site. Ingle optimises for something different: the quality of the moments you spend here. Scarce endorsements mean the ones you give land with weight. A trust graph of vouches means reach is built, not bought. Posts don't vanish into a feed — they sit in rooms that come back to them over days.
The four rooms
- Kin — a small, private room for the handful of people who already matter. Photos, short notes, voice memos, quiet reactions. You can have more than one.
- Tribes — small rooms of shared interest. Founder-run, member-vouched, often under fifty. Endorsements come tagged with a reason — thoughtful, changed my mind — instead of a count. A tribe can also be set up as a Slow Room: a series you watch or read together, one episode or chapter at a time, with discussion sealed until each one opens.
- Stage— short, public shouts to the accounts that chose to hear you. 300 characters, image welcome, hashtags if you want them. No “for you” feed, no trending, no infinite scroll.
- Journal — a home for your longer work. Essays, trip logs, portfolios, short stories, vlogs. Private or public, you choose per journal.
Letters
A letter is private correspondence on a delay. Write it today, seal it, choose a delivery date — six months from now, your dad's next birthday, the morning of a wedding — and the recipient sees nothing until then. Not a notification, not a preview, nothing. One-to-one or to a small circle. You can also write a letter to your future self — a note from past-you, sealed now, opened on the day of your choosing. A quiet surface for slow thought.
In silence
A deliberate offline mode. Set a return date, add a short public note if you like (“back in a week”, “writing”), and Ingle goes quiet around you. Unread badges disappear from the nav; your profile shows a small chip so others know not to expect a reply. Everything still accrues in the background — nothing is lost, only deferred — so you come back to what was waiting rather than missing it. Radically different from “invisible online”; this is retreat, not stealth.
How it works
- Vouchesbuild the trust graph. You get ten a week. Each one publicly signals you'd stake a bit of your reputation on this person.
- Endorsementsreplace likes in Tribes. Reason-tagged, scarce (ten a week), and non-reversible once placed. They feed a quiet resonance meter — four buckets, never a number — which decays over 48 hours. Posts aren't trophies.
- Vouches on Stage posts and Journal entries use the same weekly budget — a vouch on a shout or an entry IS a user-to-user vouch, with the post preserved as context.
- Kin reactions are five fixed glyphs, non-scarce. Warm and quick, because inner- circle rooms run on a different clock.
- Gift a post— one a week, any room. Dedicate a post to one person publicly (“for @asha”). Permanent, like the dedication page in a book. Gifts you receive surface on your profile as small italic captions and accumulate onto a shelf — a browseable collection of every post ever dedicated to you, in the order they arrived.
- Last word — on any thread you author, you can leave one final reply that closes it for good. A graceful way to end a conversation rather than have it peter out.
- Hover cards — hover any handle to see a condensed profile and how you know the person (vouched, shared tribe, shared Kin, past DM). Quiet context, no click required.
Quiet signals
Optional glyphs next to your handle that say what kinds of connection you're currently open to — friendship, romance, mentorship, collaboration, company for a walk, something to read together. Hidden by default from your close circle (the people who already know you), visible to friends-of-friends and strangers who are just meeting you. You curate the exceptions. Nothing like a dating profile — just a small, deliberate signal you can toggle off any time.
What Ingle doesn't do
- No algorithmic feed. Nothing is ranked.
- No follower counts rendered as numbers.
- No trending, no viral, no “recommended for you”.
- No infinite scroll — every list has a floor.
- No ads. Ever.
Getting in
Open tribes self-serve — sign up and join. Vouch-required and invite-only ones need somebody on the inside to bring you in. Kin is invite-only by design. Stage is open to anyone; the people you hear are the ones you choose to subscribe to. Journal has five visibility tiers per journal — from a private notebook only you can read, through invite-only members and your vouched circle, up to public and discoverable. Each journal is tuned independently.
Who made it
Mark at Christchurch Web Solutions, with a growing circle of friends who poke at it and tell him where it breaks. It's deliberately small; it will stay deliberately small until the mechanics earn the right to grow.