by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Some general thoughts.
Be The Power
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I go into a lot of detail about how, specifically you could disrupt the newspaper industry if you had, say, over $1 billion on hand to shake things up a little bit with a startup app.
idle rambling about a #startup concept to #disrupt the #newspaper industry https://t.co/4CMJudq29y
— Shelton Bumgarner ? (@bumgarls) October 21, 2018
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I have written so much about this, it’s boring at this point. But I will idly note that the newspaper business is ripe for massive disruption. All you do is start an app that pays professional journalists across the country a living wage and gives them the tools they need to properly do their job in the Internet Age.
But no one listens to me.
And maybe they shouldn’t.
by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner
While there are any number of features that Usenet had that have mysteriously not managed to make it to modern social media, the one feature that might be the most revolutionary in the end is in-line editing. For 20 years, news Websites have had a comment section that was either below or to the side of the content.
But if you gave people the ability to in-line edit the content that you generated in the app, I think that might be a killer feature. People would really enjoy the ability to have a conversation about the content inside of it. Of course, there is the issue of scalablity. I would propose managing that through redundancy of Groups that the fullpage Posts would be in as well as management of who could actually contribute content into the system.
Redundancy of Groups would be an important aspect of this service. I see this app as an Uber for news. You hire a lot of laid off reporters from around the country and use them to seed the service. I’ve proposed Time Magazine could save itself through this proposed app, but no one listens to me and so I’m just rambling at this point.
Regardless, this is a strong concept. I just wish someone would do something with it.
by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner
In this v-log, I talk about my vision for “saving” Time Magazine by turning it into an app. I love this concept, I just wish someone would listen to me.
A deep dive into saving Time Magazine by turning it into a Twitter Killer app #disrupt https://t.co/M7Z4YLP9na
— Shelt Bumgarner (@sheltbumgarner) September 24, 2018
Discussing saving Time Magazine by turning it into an app while making #coffee #disrupt https://t.co/I9djNVxKhn
— Shelt Bumgarner (@sheltbumgarner) September 24, 2018
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
No one listens to me, but this is a really compelling concept. The idea of turning the legacy brand Time Magazine into an app that would compete — and ultimately kill — Twitter is really cool. And on the face of it, it’s pretty obvious. What you do is, you use the existing content creation backend infrastructure of the magazine to start the app.
There’s just so much to talk about. I talk about all of it pretty extensively in this video. But, like I said, no one listens to me and I’m just pissing in the wind. But it is fun to talk about. I just wish someone with some power at Time Magazine might at least listen to me.
saving Time Magazine by turning it into a Twitter Killer app #disrupt https://t.co/oNs7LvLHVk
— Shelton Bumgarner ? (@bumgarls) September 22, 2018
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
This is an interesting talk. Enjoy.
monetizing Time Magazine's transformation into an app #disrupt https://t.co/h35ZHPVLY0
— Shelton Bumgarner ? (@bumgarls) September 22, 2018
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I guess why I keep writing about this concept is it’s so obvious to me. I’m something of a “power user” of Twitter and I kind of hate it. It sucks. The reason it sucks is, really, only about 10% of its user base is worth anything. So given that Time Magazine has been bought by a technology company, it seems pretty obvious to me that if you’re going to “save” it, you turn it into a social media platform designed to fell Twitter.
There’s just so much you can do with this concept. For me, the crux of it all is if you base the service on the old Usenet platform’s concepts, it make a lot of sense. Now, Reddit is a lot like Usenet, but it’s such a poorly designed implementation of Usenet as to be useless, at least in my opinion.
But here are the basics of my re-imagined Time Magazine.
Groups
Existing writers and editors of Time Magazine, instead of putting a magazine out every week, would be paid, in essence, to contribute content into the service in Groups they would be responsible for. Given that they would be paid to use the service, they would have a reason to be willing to take the time and effort to manage these Groups as systadmins. They would — at least at first — have the exclusive ability to create new Groups. Later, as a Point system kicked in, other people might be able to bubble up to the surface of the system and also be able to serve as systadims. But that would take time.
Posts
This is one cool feature — instead of being limited to 280 characters people using the Time App would have an entire full-page, multimedia Post to write content into. These Posts would have a robust threading quality to them, as well as the ability for users to in-line edit them once they had proven that they weren’t completely insane. (How they might prove this is up to discussion. I think at first it would be simply the amount of time you had used the service or whatever. Something intuitive.)
Video Conferencing
Another cool feature would be the ability to have recorded 4-way video conferencing. If you limited this feature, at least at first, to Time App staff, then you wouldn’t have to worry about abuse.
Anyway, there is so much more I could talk about, but no one listens to me. But, like I said, this is so obvious to me. It just makes so much sense. The user base of Twitter is in near open revolt and if you gave them a better mouse trap, I think they would flock to it in droves. I know a lot of celebrities and thought leaders hate Twitter with a passion. If you gave them something like my proposed “Time App” I think they would love it from the get-go.
reimagining Time Magazine as a #socialmedia #app #disrupt https://t.co/6qQGp6i7OL
— Shelton Bumgarner ? (@bumgarls) September 22, 2018
how to save Time Magazine by turning it into a Twitter Killer app #startup #disrupt https://t.co/E9fmtiLR2W
— Shelton Bumgarner ? (@bumgarls) September 22, 2018
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
There’s just so much you can do with Time Magazine’s content. It has a great name and it generates huge amounts of content on a minute-by-minute basis. So, why not use its editors and writers as the core of a new social media app and Website, one that could “kill” Twitter.
I mean, really, Twitter is completely useless and only about 10% of its user base produces any content that anyone wants to read. So what would happen if you started off from the ground up a new service where at first only the editors and writers of Time Magazine could contribute into the system full page, multimedia posts that were in different Groups devoted to thousands of different topics?
Now, I’m basing all of this in a very loose way on the old Usenet newsgroups. But to the modern user, I guess they would see it as kind of a mixture of Twitter and Reddit. What happens is, you seed the service will Time Magazine staff, then gradually, over time, others would build up enough “points” that they could also do administrative things.
It’s pretty widely known that most people — especially celebrities and other thought leaders — hate, hate, HATE Twitter for any number of reasons and I think if you gave them a viable alternative they would flock to it. There is just so much you could do with this premise. You could have recorded video conferencing, you name it.
But no one listens to me, so I’m just pissing in the wind. But this is such an obvious yet out-of-the-box use of Time Magazine staff and content it’s kind of sad that no one will do anything with this concept.
how to save Time Magazine by turning it into a Twitter Killer app #startup #disrupt https://t.co/E9fmtiLR2W
— Shelton Bumgarner ? (@bumgarls) September 22, 2018
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
It sees pretty obvious that there is a niche that’s not being served right now by social media. It’s a narrow one, but one that might be profitable given the right conditions. I’m thinking of something like Twitter but allowing for long-form discussion. I have gone into great detail about a social media service that would do just that, so I won’t get into the details.
But for me the issue is, I sometimes want to write what is really just a really long tweet but I don’t really have any options beyond either a tweetstorm or a blog post. Tweets tend to be a little too impersonal for the type of things I want to write about, but anyway.
It seems you could do something really cool with a service which allowed for, as I’ve suggested, long-form posts that were threaded. I could go on and on about this, but no one listens to me and so I’m just wasting my time at this point.
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