u/pc-builder

I am one of those people that used CS much more for the hangouts vs the surfing/hosting part, although I have surfed and or hosted people in the past occasionally. As such some of the CS alternatives don't really interest me. However, the best Hangouts alternative I found so far is Nomadtable. Which Hangouts is modeled after anyhow I suspect.

What makes Hangouts unusable for me now is that it removes the ability to connect in a separate group or instance and only works through direct messaging - it removes the cool feature of having a big group of CS people joining, a collective discussion and eventually figuring out a plan. Or knowing there's already a big group somewhere with multiple people replying. I think it also is shortsighted as if a person doesn't reply once you cannot connect a different time anymore. It happens that one night plans go differently, you forget to respond and then it fades away as a message request.

However, I did try Nomadtabel for the first time yesterday - and it worked well! I put a pin on my favorite local bar, some people joined and had a blast. It also seems free so far so that's a plus as well. It also seems MUCH more active vs Hangouts. So I guess the silver lining of this is that I finally got the push to check it out :)

In the current Hangouts you can also create an event and it would function sort of the same. Perhaps that's how the function is intended. But I don't see people doing that yet. Also the map is super cluttered with useless events. So it is hard to navigate in its current form.