Good thread on “contact tracing” apps to slow spread of COVID. Spoiler: thread suggests you need 60% of a population to use it for it to work, aka: 150M+ DAU in USA. Only a handful of apps already have this scale & new app would have to “go viral” faster than the virus itself. https://twitter.com/marcelsalathe/status/1246352109936803840

If you’re working on an app like this, please reach out as @Foursquare tech can prob help (we have the tech, we just don’t have the scale). That said, I’m skeptical of the “if you build it, they will come” nature of a new app that’s gonna need 60%/150M+ DAU to be effective

And I think the *worst* thing that can happen is we have 5 “contract tracing” apps all trying to “win” and having none of them sharing their data with each other. So if you’re working in this space, please don’t do that.

One more thought (sorry!): Yes, “contract tracing” ship has sailed for spring 2020... but we’re gonna need an app like this before we get back to normal (summer/fall/winter 2020) so get in the headspace that something like this is gonna be in our lives: https://twitter.com/dens/status/1246102306845790208?s=21 https://twitter.com/dens/status/1246102306845790208