SlidThru

Actually SOCIAL media

Scrolling is not socialising. Somewhere along the way "social" came to mean sitting indoors on your own, watching other people's evenings.

SlidThru is the other thing. Say where you'll be. The friends you choose reply in, maybe or out. Then you actually go.

POST A PLAN A place, a time, and who can see it: all your friends, one circle, or a few people you pick. A circle is a group you name yourself, like the five you go to the pub with. Every plan, event and circle has its own chat, and there are direct messages.

SAY WHEN YOU'RE FREE Open a free window — "I'm about tonight" — that expires on its own. Or set a rhythm you keep: Thursday evenings, Saturday daytimes. Friends see it. If you didn't say it, the app doesn't know it. A home-screen widget shows who's about tonight.

ASK WITHOUT ARRANGING ANYTHING A nudge tags a few friends on something to do, to see who's up for it. No plan, no place. Just asking. They can say no without turning anything down.

EVENTS Bigger invites, with a cover image, a capacity and a guest list. Each one has a web link that works for people who haven't got the app — they reply in the browser.

WHERE TO GO Name any place and it's yours — a plan works wherever you are. The built-in venue guide, with photos and filters for area and for what you're doing, covers Greater Manchester today.

AFTERWARDS A shared photo roll opens on a finished plan and stays up for a week. Split a bill and SlidThru records who owes whom, then opens your own banking app. It never touches money. Your profile shows the places you go back to, and how often.

NOTHING TO PERFORM FOR No followers. No likes. No public feed. No algorithm deciding who hears you. Almost nothing is visible except between two people who accepted each other, so there is no audience to play to and no reason to post for strangers.

There are no ads and no advertising trackers. The app never asks for your location. It cannot read where you are. Analytics stays off unless you turn it on. Signing up takes an email, a handle, a password and a birth date, checked once and not kept. No phone number, no address book.

Put the phone away when you get there. That is the whole point.