I'm mentioning them because those also focus on small talk or general discussions for everyone, but found their niche in hyper locality.
They basically show you what people write in (I think) 10km distance in an endless stream. So it's something like an anonymous hyperlocal twitter, with pretty much all kinds of random stuff that you can imagine. Too much downvoted comments are hidden, similar to HN and reddit.
Loved Yik Yak, there was a quant little sense of community with these strangers that lived within a certain radius of my home/work/school. Someone asking if anyone else saw those 2 flipped vehicles on the corner of Campbell and if anyone saw it live and knew what the hell happened, a flood of posts at 3am with everyone bitching as the fire alarms went off in the middle of the night at the dorms. I actually met my college girlfriend on that app believe it or not.
> "live conversation with strangers"... "general audience"
Sounds like "small talk". But who likes small talk so much they would use a service specifically for it?
I fear in lieu of a more compelling USP it will have a hard ceiling as "a small online friend group", which is fine, just not something that will grow beyond a profitless hobby project.
I wanted to design it for general open discussion on the web from day one.
The language of the site is designed for a general audience as opposed to say gaming or enterprise.