You hopefully get the idea behind Thoughter by now, but you're still a little skeptical, so let's analyze the #wannaLeave situation from the main page a little more. Let's say Mike and Lisa are on their first date at a really fancy restaurant and Mike likes Lisa a lot but is not into all this fancy crap. He gets the feeling that she might be a pizza-and-movie-type person too. So while they're both checking their phones Mike pushes a thought to Thoughter that is just a single hashtag #wannaLeave and puts the expiration at one hour. If Lisa checks Thoughter within that time using the same hashtag then they will both receive an email that confirms they're thinking the same thing. If Lisa likes nice restaurants, hey no problem, not a relationship killer for Mike, and Lisa will never know that Mike wanted to get out of there in the first place.

Assuming she also wants to leave though, how does Lisa know to use Thoughter with the specific hashtag #wannaLeave? To help solve this problem, Thoughter lets you send a hint to the other person. In this situation a hint might be too revealing though so Mike doesn't want to risk it. It's all up to Lisa now. If she really wants to get out of there she might check for a bunch of variations like #wannaGetOutOfHere, #letsBounce, #notFeelingThisPlace, #wannaGo, etc. Mike could increase the chance that his thought is matched by using lots of different hashtags as well. There would just have to be one hashtag in common. Alternatively, #wannaLeave could become a standard hashtag for this kind of situation, the same way popular hashtags bubble up organically on social media.

But anyway, just in case you're bored by now, this is where things get interesting. Because if #wannaLeave is a standard, Lisa could love the restaurant, be suspicious that Mike does not, and check #wannaLeave to try and catch him. To step a little more lightly Mike can set his message to "Sorry not my kind of place but will stay if you want #wannaLeave". Obviously this relationship is off to a bad start, but that's not Thoughter's problem!

Now let's say Mike wants to be really sure that Lisa is truly thinking what he's thinking and not trying to catch him out. In this case he can assign a cost to his thought, let's say $5.00. The only way Lisa can then find out if Mike sent #wannaLeave is if she assigns just as much or more cost to her thought. If that happens then they each have to pay Thoughter half of the lowest cost thought, in this case $2.50, and they can leave the fancy restaurant early. They're saving money if you think about it! Of course Lisa could still be playing tricks and want to stay in the restaurant, but it's a little socially awkward to admit that you just spent money on something like that, especially as the "price to play" gets higher.

Money also lets our promising couple fine-tune the social risk. If Mike is uncertain and nervous about how Lisa feels but also really wants to get out of that restaurant he can bump the price up to $20.00. That means they will realize that they both want to leave only if they would each pay $10.00 to get the hell out of there.

(note that ability to put a cost on a thought will be added in the near future)

Thoughter supports all these weird use cases where people could just be open and honest with each other, but hey sometimes the world just doesn't work like that.