Caygnus

Product studio · Bengaluru · working worldwide

Invite-only beta

Urban Hood

Your neighbourhood, connected: people, places and everyday life.

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Category
Social
Platform
Android · iOS · Web
Status
Invite-only beta
Built for
Residents of a neighbourhood
Region
India
Our role
Product, design, build

The idea

One neighbourhood, one shared space.

Urban Hood is a shared space for the people of one neighbourhood: local places, local happenings, local voices.

Neighbourhood apps built for global reach turn every local interaction into a feed of strangers. There was no focused space for one building or block to connect around what it shares.

A neighbourhood already shares something real: a street, a school run, a local shop that has been there longer than anyone remembers. A broad platform has to manufacture that context with algorithms and interest graphs. We only had to stay out of its way.

  • Built for residents.

    A broad-reach app has to make money from breadth, so over time it tunes for engagement between strangers. Urban Hood is built for the people who live there. It is not built for advertisers.

  • Context that already exists.

    Neighbours share streets, schools and shops before they ever open an app. We design around that shared context.

  • Better as it gets personal.

    We wanted an app that improves as it gets more personal. That is a smaller number on a slide, and we think a better product.

“We could build a thin layer over 'everywhere', or a real layer over 'here'. We picked here.”

From the journal

In the beta

An invite-only beta.

Urban Hood is open by invitation only. We will add detail here as the beta answers our questions.

What we can say today

  • A shared space for the people of one neighbourhood.
  • Local places, local happenings, local voices.
  • Built for residents. Not built for advertisers.
  • In an invite-only beta on Android, iOS and Web, ahead of a wider rollout.
What the beta tests
Whether one shared space for a single neighbourhood, with its local places, happenings and voices, works in everyday use.
What we have found
It is early, and we have no findings to share yet. We will add them here as the beta answers our questions.
What it does not do yet
Access is by invitation only. Features and neighbourhoods are limited while we test.
Wider rollout
There is no date yet. Urban Hood opens to more people after the beta.