Jiho Kang and SK Planet want to make having a penpal mainstream again. With their app, Wayfare, users can sign up and almost instantly start gallivanting around the world in search of a pen pal. You can read the full review here but we have actually had a chance to chat it up with Jiho Kang for a more personal, and in-depth, look at the hot new app. Read our interview below!
1. What is Wayfare, in your words?
We came up with the name "Wayfare" from the more commonly known word "Wayfarer." It's a virtual travel experience and I personally think it's the next best thing to having teleportation technology. Some people call Wayfare a "penpal app" and I guess it's the easiest way to describe it but it's so much
more. The way I'd describe it is a window into another world, an opportunity to switch lives with someone on the other side of the globe. On the surface, Wayfare connects people from across the planet one-on-one into a common mobile messaging interface. Paired users become each other's guide and have up to 7 days to share what it's really like to be you, what it's like to live your life. But it's not just a messaging app that connects random strangers. We call our penpals "guides," like in tour guide, and the app provides key features to help you really experience the magic.
* Missions
Wayfare provides prompts called "missions" to spark conversation and inspiration. Our missions encourage users to share photos of stuff they would normally consider boring or mundane, such as "what you had for lunch," "the inside of your refrigerator," or "a local street sign". What we're discovered is that even the most mundane parts of everyones lives can become something immensely fascinating to the person living on the other side of the globe. You can see answers to photo missions side by side to really experience the contrast and similarities across boarders and cultures.
* Built in translation
You don't have to share a common language to start communicating with your new guides. We have machine translation built into the app to help you translate text you don't understand. It's not perfect, but it's also a pretty interesting experience trying to guess what your other guide is trying to communicate. In fact, 30% of all conversations are between people who share no common language.
* Only one guide at a time
Wayfare connects you with just one guide at any given time. I'll explain more in answer to question #4 below.
2. What inspired Wayfare?
The concept of Wayfare has a pretty long history. It goes back before I joined SK planet. In 2010 I joined a Silicon Valley startup that was focused around language education. The original founders built a massive web based service that connected students in Asia with students in the United States via video chat to help with their English. The service paid students in the US to have casual conversations with students in Asia, and Asian students would pay per hour to participate in each session. The initial feedback was great but we soon discovered that the students in the US were not interested in the money, and Asian students were not interested in working on their English. Both sides were talking about how awesome it was to connect with peers living in a country they've never visited, and to share each others lives. I convinced the team to ditch the web based language education service for something that would help users simply connect and explore. Something asynchronous, something they can carry around(mobile), and something that's not in-your-face video chat. Thus, an app called "Wander" was born which is basically the ancestral version of today's Wayfare. The company ultimately failed to raise enough money to keep the ball rolling and eventually went defunct. I was forced to retreat to my home country(South Korea) where I joined SK planet. Interestingly, I continued to receive emails from old Wander users long after I pulled the plug on the servers, requesting the app be fixed. The number of users downloading the app each day was also pretty high for an app that hasn't been maintained for over a year(over 150 download a day). SK planet provided me with a second chance to make this concept work. It is the goal of the companies internal startup incubator called "Planet X" to foster products that have the potential to make an impact on the world. Unlike your traditional startup & VC relationship, the program is much less focused around how much cash we can make and more focused on how much impact we can make for the sake of awesomeness. I was lucky to be able to present the idea and concept to SK planet which lead to rebuilding everything from scratch. I believe it was SK planet's commitment that helped me get another shot at making the world smaller.
3. How has the audience taken to Wayfare so far?
We've hit over 50,000 uniques in the past 30 days and 650,000 messages and photos have been exchanged to date. We've reached top 10 in the iOS App Store's Travel category in 17 countries and holding a global average 4.2 / 5.0 star rating on the iOS App Store where most of the bad reviews are linked to bugs in the app. Apart from the stats, we've had users tell us stories of how they actually ended up traveling to a specific country to meet up with people they met on Wayfare, and some people living in rural areas saying that Wayfare provided them the opportunity to communicate with foreigners for the very first time in their lives. Stories about how a girl in the US met a guide from Iran who completely changed her perspective on what's going on in the middle east. The internet has existed for ages but I think Wayfare is the app to finally be on the verge of creating something that truly connects people into one global community.
4. Why must users wait to respond to their penpals?
Most apps that connect users with random strangers tend to build a large community of people who like to flirt online. We wanted our users to understand that the app isn't about who has the cutest profile pics. We have intentionally blocked users from being able to flip through tens of hundreds of people until they find someone attractive. On Wayfare, only one guide is provided to you from the server and you are allowed to have only one active match at anytime. We've had some backlash from the community mostly because we're having trouble weeding out users that are unresponsive but I truly believe that this design really gets people into the correct mind set. Everyone has the potential to be awesome, we don't want our users to dismiss someone just because he/she doesn't have the best selfie. Since the app is designed around the strong concept of one-on-one, one at a time, it would greatly reduce everyone's chance of getting into a conversation if people were allowed to ditch a guide because they don't have a cute profile pic or weren't immediately responsive. It would also destroy the experience for the entire community. People live in different timezones, and people aren't standing by 24/7. The more experienced users on Wayfare will advise others that it takes a few tries before you hit your first magical experience but is well worth the effort. Most users will receive a response within 12 hours but we're still working on creative ways to shorten this gap.
5. How does matchmaking work? How are users paired with each other?
We're tweaking the rules for matchmaking almost every week. We work with a limited amount of personal info; birth year, gender, city of residence so we try to learn as much as we can from users as they use the app. What type of missions are they more interested in? What language do they speak(via text language detection)? What time of day, days of the week are they most active? Do they like sharing photos or enjoy more conversation? We try to take all these factors into account to see which pairings work out best. We also try to keep randomness as a strong factor as well. I believe the entire point of exploration is to experience something unexpected.
6. I love Japanese culture and would love to filter out results just for Japan. Are there any plans to let users choose a country (or continent) to focus on?
There is a "ticketing" feature with allows users to connect with guides from specific countries. The ticketing feature provides you with a list of countries that have users available for match. Not all countries are always available as everyone in that country might have already been paired with someone else.We're thinking of providing users with more options in the future that will effect who they get matched with. Maybe even down to cities and interests but we're going to have to be careful how they're implemented as we've discovered that certain features can disrupt how users use the app.
7. With so many social apps coming out, where does Wayfare fit in?
Most social apps today are focused around instant gratification focusing inward; through geo-local matching, interest matching, matching via people you already know offline, friends of friends etc. The few apps that do try to connect you with absolute strangers are focused directly or indirectly on dating.
Wayfare is focused outward, it creates connections and relationships not possible any other way except actually hopping on a plane and traveling the globe. Instead of helping people try to impress their friends, it helps people see how special ordinary stuff around them actually are. Some might argue that the lack of instant gratification is killing the first time experience, but I believe that it builds anticipation and a healthy community in the long run. A clear result is that the app is not flirty; "pervs" are almost non-existent. We're creating a social internet experience that is truly globalized and integrated.
8. What's SK Planet's overall mission statement?
We're trying to make the word smaller. (Working on teleportation technology is definitely one of our long term goals!)
9. Do you and SK Planet have any plans for new features on Wayfare?
Becoming a guide is a lot of fun, but actually requires commitment. After a couple of guides users do feel some fatigue. We're currently working on ways that allow users to publicly open up all the awesome conversations and photos they've exchanged with their previous guides. Users are exchanging some amazing content and they all have incredible stories to share. It's a shame all of that is locked into a vault (a match session) that only two people can access. When this is implemented, users will have the option to enjoy Wayfare in a more passive way by discovering stories, even when they're not in an active pairing. This might come in the form of a personal feed, there are some privacy issues to work out but I believe we're on the verge of another breakthrough.
So, there you have it, a more personal look at the app Wayfare. We'd like to thank Jiho
Kang for taking the time to answer our questions, and I'm happy to report that as I continue
to use Wayfare to connect with users around the world, that it is quite obvious that SK
Planet is listening to users and continuing to add features for the betterment of the product.
