Have you ever wanted to make new friends from anywhere around the world? Minus is an app and new social network that allows users to chat with other users or communities from anywhere around the globe. Unlike other social networks, Minus provides users with a list of other Minus members to reach out to based on geographic location. The company behind Minus wasn’t always focused on making new global connections. The service transformed from being primarily about photo sharing, and later pivoted to find success in social networking.
Originally Min.us, a startup based out New York City, NY, was founded soon after Carl Hu (CEO) and John Xie (Co-founder), met at a MIT/Harvard entrepreneurship mixer event in 2010. In an interview with Heavy.com, John Xie said, “Neither of us worked for MIT or Harvard, but we were invited to go to the event. We clicked and wanted to do a small project- and that was Min.us.”
The original idea of Min.us was to be one simple application. It would allow users to drag and drop photos, create, and share galleries to sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit.
After quitting both of their jobs in the Summer of 2011, John Xie and Carl Hu raised enough venture capital to launch Min.us.
“We went to New York City and set up an office to take publishing to the next level. We focused on publishing for about a year and half before we tried to do something with the photo aspect of things,” explained John Xie.
Since then, Min.us shifted gears and is now known as Minus, a social chat application that offers both iOS and Android users a revolutionary chat and photo experience.
With the latest update, the app provides a beautiful new interface, new sidebar navigation menu, and Air Minus feature. Users can tap the Airplane icon in Explore and instantly fly around the world to chat with users online.
