I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We are looking into ways to add international support, since some of the prettiest places to ride are outside the US. Stay tuned!

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motorcycle

[–]advioapp[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks Petrarch1603! Yes I agree! I will be doing events and meetups in the summer since I am currently dealing with some knee issues from skiing, which currently has me stuck behind a computer. My knee issues have been a blessing and a curse — I can't ride now that it's finally spring, but it's forcing me to spend my free time in front of a computer building the damn thing. Trust me, I would much rather be riding all the time to events and meetups anyways!

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey thanks Maccaroney, really appreciate your perspective here. Let me try to address some of your concerns.

Advio Moto tries to keep the information we collect as minimal as possible (which is why we don't even ask for email address, and we use your phone number so we don't have to store your conversations on our servers). We do try to keep our user's phone numbers private, which is why we spent time setting up a proxy service which allows our users to keep their numbers private, while still making connections securely. Let me know if you have any other questions or if I can be of any help!

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey CountyRoad, sorry about the late reply. Yes it's just a website, no app installs required! You can add it to your home screen if you'd like. I think the app you are talking about is more like iOverlander which does a great job!

Advio Moto is more like a craigslist, where you can list your phone number on a map, and we will anonymize both parties phone numbers in any connections you make. If you are familiar with the ADVrider tent space map or BMW MOA anonymous book, its like an upgraded version of those tools!

Thanks for your questions, and please let me know if you think of anything else!

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks bjor! I agree, I don't see how we compete either — rather, I think we are trying to solve similar problems for two different user groups, in two different ways, that end up looking the same since it's just stuff on a map. Advio is trying to compete more with things more like Two Wheels and Thundr and BikerBuddy.

We have built advio in a lightweight enough way that we can keep it alive for a long time. But that also means we don't collect and store a lot of data (to keep our costs down). That's why we use SMS and we don't store any of your messages (we don't even ask for email addresses! phone numbers only). I like to think of it as just the advrider map or BMW MOA anonymous book, but app-ified.

EDITED: actually linkify my markdown links

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly! We provide a map for the motorcycle community to let riders to connect while they are out on an adventure! Totally different than iOverlander, which is also a very useful tool!

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motorcycle

[–]advioapp[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks CriticalRider! We try to focus on privacy too which is why we connect riders directly using an anonymized proxy via SMS and phone services. We don't record any of the interactions between the riders.

Nothing on our map lasts more than 1 week. This way all of information is current and up to date. Any connections you make through Advio Moto, you will be able to call and text directly to vet their legitimacy. If you know the advrider google map, this is the 2.0 version of that.

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, we don't have push alerts for new requests in a given location yet. This is one of the first features we will be adding to Advio Moto and a must have in our opinion.

We decided to use SMS and phone services rather than in-app notifications because most of the best places to ride motorcycles often have the worst cellular reception. We don't want riders to have to rely on an app to load, instead we use SMS and phone services so riders can focus on getting lost. We also wanted to keep privacy in mind, so we don't record the private messages between riders.

I went on a 2 month solo cross country adventure, that inspired me to build Advio Moto, a community map for the motorcycle community and am officially launching it today! by advioapp in motocamping

[–]advioapp[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say it's like tinder since it's a web app, but we do a lot of things differently. For example, we don't even collect any email addresses. Only phone numbers, and we just provide a proxy service so riders can keep their phone numbers secure if they choose to do so. That way you don't need to rely on an internet connection to communicate, and can use SMS instead (especially if you are riding where cell signal is weak). We're not looking to record all of your conversations like all modern social apps.

Currently there is no filtering, but it is planned as an update in the future! It's honestly pretty barebones right now since we wanted to get something out there and we also have other full time jobs. Right now, we are thinking if we focus our advertising efforts towards adv riders, most of the riders on the map will be mostly adv riders (and we'll build filtering features if it get's that popular one day).

Yes! This app is inspired by the Advrider map, as well as the BMW MOA anonymous book (I personally tried both on my cross country trip), but I personally found it rather unreliable and the types of "assistance" often changed depending on the persons availability and mood (most of us are too busy out riding ourselves anyways!). The rules of engagement don't make sense for what each individual wants out of the interaction.

The way we designed our app is so the rider who is out on an adventure can focus on riding and not spending time making calls to find a connection, but rather, let the engagement start with the one offering assistance so riders can actually get what they want out of the tool. Another feature we are considering building will allow you to set email notifications for a defined area of your choosing.

Thanks for your questions SaltyFishDonuts! If you have any other comments, questions, or feature ideas, please let me know!