Blog on Directory

v0.3-beta Release Notes

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

News

Mobile Releases are under review!

Mobile versions are finally ready and its so much smoother than using a browser!

The directory app installed on a mobile phone.

The app must be reviewed by Google and Apple before it will be accessible publicly, but I can give anyone early access by adding them to my internal testing program. This gives you access to the latest versions before they become public, use the app as you usually would, and report any suggestions or bugs that you notice.

I’ll be grateful for anyone who wants to join early access! If you join, there is no obligation to report anything, you mostly just get to use the latest version before everyone else! Sign up for early access by emailing me whether you are on iOS or Android and the email address associated to your google or apple account!

cecilia@meet.directory

Call for photos continues!

I’m still accepting photos and have formalized the submission process here.

Be like these cool people and submit your photos!

Additions to the App

New Features

Safari support - Mac users should now be able to launch the app in Safari!
Style overhaul
Profiles now show approximate distance (“X miles away”)
Notification icons when there is a new message or like.
Email verification

Invisible Improvements

Android native photo selection
API versioning
Search improvements
API refactoring to make it more robust

Legal

The Terms of Service was updated with an additional child safety clause to comply with Google Playstore standards. See the diff here.

Cheers,

Cecilia

Directory's Finances

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure where to put finances on the website yet, but in the spirit of maintaining transparency, I thought I’d share some of the costs with y’all as another “ride-along”. Directory currently has no funding and was made for free and paid for out-of-pocket by your local unemployed friend (me).

I used to think that microservice bloat was endemic to nonsensical corporate environments, but as I work toward making Directory a reality, I have found that a fair amount of services are necessary. My short former life as a devops person has at least given me a sense of how to pick services that are cheap and have a minimal amount of BS.

That deserves a separate post, but suffice it to say I’ve tried my best to keep external services down to the bare essentials. Here are all of the subscription purchases I’ve made so far:

Service	Product	Monthly Cost
Website, Server and Database Hosting	Render	~$13
Object Storage (photos)	Wasabi	$7
Domain name		$1.67
Email Service	Fastmail	$5
Email Newletter service	Buttondown	$9
Business Phone Number	Hushed	$5
Email automation service	Resend	$0
Code Hosting	Github	$0
Total		$40.67

Service	Monthly Cost
Apple Developer Account	$8.25 ($99 yearly, absolutely bonkers)
Total with Apple	$48.92

The total recurring cost of keeping Directory running is less than most people’s home internet bill! And I don’t expect those numbers to go up by much until there are over 10,000 users.

There were also some one-time costs:

Product	Price
Mac Book Neo	$600
Google Developer Account	$25
LLC registration	$225 (It’s actually $125 but I got it rushed due to poor planning)
Total	$850

I didn’t have any Apple products before starting work on Directory, but an Apple computer and developer account is necessary to release anything on iOS and all my friends’ macbooks are too bloated from planned obsolescence to help me, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Legal Costs

I did most of my legal research consulting and drafting with Claude. Then I was able to get a free 30 minute legal consultation at the Carolina Junction that assuaged my fears of using my own legal documents.

If I had used legal services from some of the lawyers I asked, normal rates were around $450/hour. One lawyer I contacted charges $350 just for an initial consultation!

Marketing Costs aaaaah

Since I’m in the Triangle, I will of course be using the Poster Guys ($100 for 200 posters around Chapel Hill and Durham). If any readers out there have other ideas for spreading the word locally, do let me know!

I’m also providing $50 per photo submission I use.

The Future

I initially decided to give myself a budget of about $2500 to see if I can get Directory off the ground to the point of being able to run on donations. I’m still within that budget.

If things get more serious I may need to give a lawyer some actual money for actual legal advice. And I may need to buy a dedicated IPhone for testing instead of borrowing my mom’s, but for now, things are pretty cheap.

The real cost of Directory has been my time. I’ve spent the last 12 weeks working more or less full time on this project. Perhaps once the technical part is done, Directory can stand on its own with simple maintanence and moderation.

Anything more is wishful thinking at this point, but we’ll see how well we do once we launch on mobile platforms later this month!

Stay tuned

~ Cecilia

v0.2-beta Release Notes

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

News

Call for Photos!

As the mobile release of Directory approaches, I’m searching for photos to be used in marketing! I’m looking for photos that look like authentic profile pictures with personality. Photos of couples or multiple partners are welcome!

If you or anyone you know would like to participate, you can send submissions to me directly at cecilia@meet.directory. I can offer $50 venmo or check for each photo I decide to use!

No AI slop here!

Mobile App Registration has begun!

We got our DUNS number two weeks ago, which means the process of putting Directory on mobile app stores has officially begun! If all goes well, I’m hoping to get the beta version as-is onto Android and iOS within the next two weeks and then continue updating!

Changes to the App

New compatibility filtering

The biggest change to the app is a new addition to the filtering system. Previously the only filtering mechanism for compatibility was with tags. Tags can be anything- gender, identity, sports, foods, lifestyles – and anyone can add more. If enough people join, I expect there to be lots and lots of tags.

When all tags are treated equally and there are potentially many synonymous tags, its not entirely clear how to filter for basic compatibility on gender and orientation. So, in addition to custom tags, there are now a few built-in options to choose from in the profile editor:

New options in profile settings to specify your relationship types and basic gender preference

This was a hard choice, because to me the custom tagging system is the bread and butter of directory. Part of what initially felt special was that no labels were “baked in” or more important than any other.

But I think the reality is most people are going to identify strongly with female, male, or nonbinary and have a strong preference for who they want to meet if they are using the app for dating. Hard-coding these into the app makes it much easier to onboard and navigate as a user.

If anyone has thoughts on how to do this better, I would love to hear them!

Other new features in 0.2

A smoother onboarding process
touch to scroll now works on dropdown menus for mobile
Location data!
- Rough location data is captured on app start up. I’m using IP location which is not as accurate as data from location services, so use a generous search margin. We’ll get there eventually.
- Distance filter is now enabled
- User’s city is now displayed on profile
Photos are now using a square 1:1 aspect ratio

Invisible changes:

Upgraded to Godot 4.6
work on applications for mobile developer accounts
continued work on mobile apps
- support for native ios photo selection

Changes for existing users

Existing users will have all genders and relationship type preferences selected, as this was the default behavior before the update. You can update these in the profile settings.
I plan to remove the basic relationship/identity tags I initially added such as “man”, “woman”, “poly” because they are now redundant. However if you feel strongly about one of these tags and want to keep it you can always recreate it!
Your existing profile photos will appear smaller because they are in the original 4:5 aspect ratio. Re-uploading them will put them in the new aspect ratio.
The first time you login, location will be updated. Existing users may not appear right away until they also have locations updated. If you’re still not seeing any search results after a few weeks, please reach out to me.

Terms and Privacy Policy Change

The privacy policy used to say that we do not collect location data, but plan to in the near future. Now it says that we collect “coarse location data, with latitude and longitude rounded to three decimal places.”

Previously the terms of service said this app was for NC residents only. However, I can’t actually restrict mobile app store access by state, so I took this restriction out of the terms. But for now, I’ll only be advertising in NC.

See the diffs here and here.

In this early phase of development, feedback on the features and look and feel of the app is always welcome! You can send it to contact@meet.directory or directly in the app settings.

~ Cecilia

CEO's first mail

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first things you want to do when starting a business is register a business entity in your state such as an LLC, nonprofit, or corporation. Having a business entity allows you to cosplay as that entity to accomplish various tasks without putting your own name on the line, such as racking up credit card debt on new office chairs or selling user data to sketchy third party advertisers.

If I had a lawyer they would probably tell me at this point to disclaim that these more personal blog posts are my own and don’t represent the opinions of Social Directory LLC. So let me just state that I am not cosplaying as I write this and these are my own opinions.

On March 23, I filed for Social Directory LLC. And with the public announcement imminent, I paid an extra $100 bucks for 24hr processing and they approved it within 3 hours! I had originally filed for a nonprofit on March 17 and still have yet to hear back on it. Money really does talk.

You can register new businesses in North Carolina on the NC Secretary of State website, which, as you can see, is a masterclass in UI design:

Screenshots of sosnc.gov's online services page. Some thumbnails are re-used for different options and some options are repeated on different subpages. It is so bright that I nearly blinded myself opening this website to take screenshots at night.

Every link you click on this website seems to take you to another page of tiles. It almost feels like walking through a forest of AI hallucinations, even though most of these thumbnails don’t seem to be AI generated at all. Albeit mildly frustrating, at times navigating this website gave me the same kind of nostalgia that you get visiting grandma’s house or looking at a poster made lovingly by a boomer with microsoft text effects.

Anywho, about a week after my LLC was approved, I got my very first letter addressed to Social Directory LLC!

A mysterious and important-looking letter from somewhere in Raleigh NC.

What I thought was a simple approval notice, actually appeared to be a threat from the government: If I don’t buy a labor law sign and post it in my “office” I’m subject to a $16,000 fine!

A letter that says "Labor Law Poster Requirement Notice" and uses the same formatting as official forms and letters from the US government.

To be clear, I’m all for mandating labor law signage, but for single-member LLCs? “Regardless of the number of employees”? Filing for the LLC itself was $125 and nowhere did they warn me I’d be forced to pay an additional $115 for a sign!

Was this the work of some republican that couldn’t prevent a law from passing so instead decided to do whatever it takes to make small business owners hate labor laws?

Alas I am a sucker for large fine threats from the government, so as the deadline approached, I finally sat down to buy the damn poster, already thinking about the blog post I would write about the new adornment to my living room. Luckily my sense kicked in when I started typing in the website and realized it wasn’t an nc government site at all… The observant reader may have already noticed the “important notice” at the bottom of the letter…

Notice that this letter is not endorsed by the government.

So yeah, you can print these labor laws for free from labor.nc.gov and I’m not even required to.

I have yet to receive any legitimate mail to my LLC and since incorporating I’ve received two more scam letters, an insurance offer and an offer from Chase bank. It made me realize scammers, banks, and insurance companies (oh my!) are watching out for new small businesses the way traffic lawyers scan police databases for new speeding tickets.

Until next time,

~ Cecilia

v0.1.1-beta Release Notes!

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A few updates since our first release one week ago!

Bug tracking and open source migration

For those curious, we’ve released the client code on Github! We’ll need to spend some more time working on a public contribution process, but for now we are using Github to track bugs and issues. So for the more developer-oriented users, feel free to submit issues directly in Github!

Photo location data privacy

One user asked if we strip location data from photos– and the answer is yes!

When you upload a photo, the client creates a new photo that is cropped and has a lower resolution than the the original. It is this new file that is then sent to the server. So the original exif data doesn’t get transferred at all because it is a new file.

New features/bug fixes

photo upload works! (Something always has to go wrong on release day ^^')
Previously, kinks were under the sex category, but someone reminded us that many people who practice kink aren’t sexual at all! So we have renamed the “sex” category to “intimacy” and moved the “sex” tag under this category. We think this designation makes more sense and fits a broader array of tags.
The search filter now allows you to only show unseen profiles.
in-app user feedback form
change your password in the app!
Users now stay logged in for 21 days and no more server errors. There were some browser issues that would sign out the account or show a message that an error occurred when reaching the server. No longer!

Clipboard and Password manager compatability

We’re aware that our login form is not yet compatable with password managers and the clipboard behavior is a little janky (in Firefox, copy and paste doesn’t work at all!). It turns out this issue is a bit more complicated than we thought and we likely won’t have time to resolve it soon as we focus on upcoming mobile releases, but the issues are being tracked!

~ Cecilia

Hello world!

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We had a lot of fun finally announcing Directory in public this week and getting our first handful of users! You all had lots of great feedback for us to work on! The beta version of Directory is available to use in your browser right now for North Carolina residents!

I wanted to start this blog as an informal way to be more transparent about whats happening with Directory. So here’s a little info on where we’re heading.

Roadmap

Some of our top priorities right now:

Open source all of our code for transparency and to open up a public contribution process.
Perfect and finish the base features. For example, we still need to add:
- location services
- Notifications
- “hidden” tag section
- saved search filter
- Blocking
Expand our Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh user base
Release native apps for iOS and Android
- We are mostly waiting on our DUNS number to get assigned to the LLC so we can create developer accounts with Google and Apple. And this takes about 30 days.
Have stable funding for the base expenses of keeping the service running.

Some priorities down the road:

Become a nonprofit with tax-exempt status
Expand to other cities
Have funding for moderators and maintainers.

Thank you for your support,

~ Cecilia