Offline messaging in FB Messenger
Company Hackathon
Product design
Business strategy
Summer 2014, I attended Outside Lands Music Festival, along with 100,000 others. Cell service was a pain - messages wouldn’t go through, and it was hard to find your friends.
You could imagine a similar issue with national disasters, protests, and terrorist attacks; everyone trying to use their phones in high density areas during crisis.
We all had phones with bluetooth (150 ft range) and a month prior, Facebook split out messenger, so everyone had Messenger on their phones.
Why couldn’t we message without data or wifi through a mesh network in dense areas (messages hopping between devices)?
The company hackathon was around the corner and I pitched the idea to a few fellow interns. 3 long days later:
There were a number of obvious security and privacy concerns, but it was 2014, and we wanted to see if this tech was even feasible. We ended up placing top 10 in the company-wide hackathon and pitching to Mark Zuckerberg, who said, and I quote - “This is a good idea, it makes sense, great job guys.”