LocateYu — the answer is with someone you almost know

Why LocateYu exists

The third question

Two questions already have good answers. LocateYu is built for the third.

Google Maps

Where is it?

TripAdvisor

What do strangers think?

LocateYu

Who can show me what the map cannot?

Klara was looking for a quiet bar in Barcelona. Three degrees away, Daniel recommended a small place with no sign and no queue of tourists – exactly the kind of bar she had hoped to find.

He was nearby and showed her the way. The place was worth the detour. That they also got on was a bonus.

LocateYu found the place through a person who knew it.

In short

Three things, and nothing more

01

Places with people behind them

Here every place comes with a connection. You see who in your network has been there, what they think, and why the place is worth the trip. No paid placements. No stars without a person behind them.

02

The question finds its way

“We have three hours in the Gòtic – where should we go?” The question goes to your friends first, and further out into the network if it needs to. The answers come from people who know the area. When the time is up, the question disappears again.

03

People, not just answers

Some send their favourite places. Others say: “I’ll come along.” LocateYu makes room for both. If you do meet, you both rate the experience afterwards – that is how trust is built, one meeting at a time.

A profile

One person, ten places

A LocateYu profile is not a wall of posts. It is a map of the places a person actually chooses – the café she keeps returning to, the beach she never tires of, the mountain that was worth the climb and the hotel she still talks about.

When many people share trails like that, a map grows out of it that no guidebook could have made.

An illustration. This profile is invented.

Just as important

What it is not

Not a feed.

No infinite scroll, no algorithm that has to fill space. Everything on the front page is fresh or from someone you know, and it comes to an end.
Not a follower game.

No public follower counts. The numbers you see are reach — how many people could answer you — and only you see them.
Not an open messaging app.

Friends can always write to each other, and those conversations last. Further out, a thread starts from a question, a meeting or a place — and closes with it. No stranger can write to you because they saw you on the map.
Not a review site.

“I'll be back” from someone you know means more than 4.7 out of 800 strangers.

The core flow

You land in a city where you know no one

1
You ask

“Three of us want to see the Gòtic.” Three hours. Two degrees out — 11 people.
2
Silence for 30 minutes

The app offers to widen it by one degree. You say yes. Now 58 people.
3
Giulia answers

Through Maren. 94 % of 31 meetings would meet her again. She is free at four.
4
The safety part

A public meeting point from the map. Maren follows the meeting until it is over.
5
Afterwards

Both rate, blind. The thread closes with the question.

Friends, and friends of friends

Nobody here is a stranger

Your map does not fill up with random people. Every place comes from someone connected to you through a person you already know — one, two or three degrees away. Eight friends quickly become two hundred people you can ask.

Friends The ones you added yourself. You know who they are.
Friends of friends You do not know them — but you know someone who does, and the app shows you who.
Three degrees This is where it stops. Further out, a recommendation is as anonymous as the rest of the internet, and then it is worth no more than that.

You do not trust Daniel. You trust Maren — and Maren trusts Sofia enough to have her in her network.

That is not complete trust, and it does not need to be. It is enough to accept a tip about a bar. And it is three things a stranger online never has: a name, a path back to someone you know, and a rating from people who actually met him.

Decisions that stand

The rules the app is built on

Tips only

Next to “meet up” sits “tips only”. Most people will help without committing — without that button, only the most outgoing answer.

Rating

Per cent “would meet again”, not stars. Blind until both have answered or 24 hours have passed. New people read as new, not as bad.

Meetings

A public meeting point from the map, never home addresses. Meetings are 18+; the rest of the app is from 15.

Location

Live sharing only between mutual friends, never with “everyone”, and it switches itself off after four hours.

The map

MapLibre and OpenStreetMap, not Google. That gives offline maps, our own visual identity and predictable cost.

Your data

Built and hosted in the EU under GDPR. Delete your account from inside the app. Your reach is yours alone to see.

How it looks

Built and in use

Real screenshots from the app as it runs today — the map, top lists, places with photos, messages and profile.

Pull up — who is out now, and the live questions

In town — people from your network nearby right now

Activity — what is happening around your question

Ask the network — pick the time, and how far it goes

Profile and reach — visible only to you

Scroll sideways →

A story

I was looking for a bar. The answer was a person.

LocateYu did not match me with a profile I might like. It found a person who knew the city I was standing in.

It was a little past seven on my last evening in Barcelona. I had three hours and no plans, and I asked LocateYu a simple question:

“Somewhere nice for a glass of wine in El Born — quiet enough to hear yourself think?”

The question went to my friends first. Then one degree further. In the end an answer came back from Daniel.

Via Maren → Sofia · 3rd degree

He suggested two places. One of them was pretty, he wrote, but full of tourists. The other was down a narrow side street a few minutes away.

“I work right nearby. I can show you the place if you like.”

He was a stranger, but not a random one. Between us were people we both had a connection to. I could see which places he had recommended before, what others had written after meeting him, and how he was tied to my own network.

I said yes.

Daniel was waiting outside a small wine bar with no sign. Inside he greeted the bartender by name and ordered something local I would never have found on my own. The conversation started with the city: the streets he liked, the places that had changed, and the restaurant his grandmother still insists gets the food wrong.

Then it stopped being about the city.

Afterwards he showed me a bookshop that stays open late, a courtyard with no name on the map, and the view from a bridge most people just walk straight across. The three hours I had to fill were suddenly too short.

The rest we worked out ourselves.

LocateYu had not matched two profiles.

It had only found the connection between them – and given them a place to start.

A fictional story, and the photographs are illustrations. Daniel does not exist and the evening never happened – but the flow is the app’s own.

The pilot

Be one of the first hundred

Leave an email address and the neighbourhood you spend your time in. You will hear from us when the pilot opens where you are — and nothing else in between.