Tag: Startup

The Pitch For My Vision of A Twitter Replacement

by Shelt Garner
@shetgarner

They key thing to remember is there is a window of opportunity for a startup to come up with a replacement for Twitter that embraces and extends its existing UX. I propose that a startup cherrypicks the best UX elements of Usenet so you give users what they don’t even realize what they want.

One issue is, instead of little banner ads, you could have very specific full-page ads woven into a thread on a subject where users could buy goods and services without going to a new Website. That’s where you would make your money and that’s what would make the whole thing worthwhile.

A use case would be that a user creates a very-specific Group devoted to, say their favorite TV show — maybe The Last of Us.

It would be one of many other similar Groups devoted to the show. But through data mining, you would know what people in that Group were interested in and you would place a full page ad in such a way that it would be unavoidable as people were going through the thread.

Remember, because the basic building block of this proposed service would be full page Posts with in-lining editing, that really expands what you could do with ads.

A Newspaper Suggestion For Mike Bloomberg

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here’s my Christmas gift for plutocrat Mike Bloomberg who apparently craves buying a major newspaper like The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal — I suggest he disrupt the newspaper business instead.

Why buy one newspaper for a few billion dollars when you could totally transform the way people get their news? What I would do is take the concept of Twitter –or, more specifically the my personal idea that involves cherrying picking the best elements of Usenet and fusing them with Twitter — and give the concept a paid editorial staff.

If I had a few billion dollars to play with, here’s what I would do — I would have a common brand domain name, but each major city across the country would have their own subdomain — nyc.domain.domain and so forth. If you used my idea of the Post being the central element of a new social media startup, that would give you all the space you needed to write a traditional length newspaper story. (I have written a lot about this idea on this blog, so if you’re really all that interested in the UX of my social media daydream just look under “startup” or maybe “Usenet.”)

Anyway, wanting to buy a major America newspaper — when none of them are for sale — seems like a fool’s errand. Now, obviously, if Bloomberg did as I suggested, the entire newspaper industry would fucking hate his guts because the plan would…work.

If you could transition the entire newspaper industry away from print with an app that allowed for long-form newspaper articles in the context of threaded discussions…well, you’ve built a better mouse trap.

‘Twitter Killer’ Use Case: Brands

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here is how I imagine brands might use my “Twitter Killer” on a practical basis. The key issue to remember is Brands, like everyone else, would have a far more feature rich experience to use than they would on Twitter.

Instead of just a 280 character tweet, they would have an entire webpage to work with — that would be threaded! So, say you were a Widget Company and you were releasing a new Widget. You could create new Groups devoted to different elements of this Widget.

And because you would have control over who could Post to each of these groups — they would, essentially be read-only to most people — you could all but eliminate trolls and other people who might attack your brand just because they could. They could still attack your Brand elsewhere, of course. Just not in your Groups.

What’s more, people could buy your Widget straight from a Post — with our Twitter Killer getting a cut, of course.

If you were a content provider, meanwhile, you could push content from your own site –original formatting included — into the Twitter Killer itself. Then authorized users could inline edit your content inside a Group that was threaded.

All that sounds pretty cool to me, at least. Too bad this is all just the ranting of a broke writer who should be working on one of six novels he wants to write before he crokes.

My Proposed Twitter Replacement Fixes An Existential Problem With Existing Social Media Platforms

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The key flaw in social media is it’s very “flat” in the sense that the different sides of your life are mashed together into one circle. There have been efforts to manage this in the past — most notably Google’s failed G+ with it’s “Circles” concept, but I’ve come up with a far more simple concept that fixes this problem once and for all.

The solution is what I call Groups. As part of the onboarding process for this proposed service, you create as amy public or personal groups as you like. Using a drag-and-drop feature, you put your Friends within different groups, depending on how you know them. Within these Groups, you would have Posts that were threaded, just like the good old days of Usenet.

Meanwhile, people you didn’t know could join different Public groups that you had created — this would be ideal if you were some sort of public content creator like a journalist or celebrity. You would be given the ability to restrict who could post in the group as necessary.

I guess what I’m trying to say is — I’ve come up with fixes for the existential flaws in the Usenet UX that caused it die in the first place. But all of this is a big lulz. No one cares and I’m wasting my time. I would be far better served to shut up and continue to throw all my energy in finishing my first novel.

Silicon Valley Is Embarrassing Itself — Of Course We Need An Adult Version Of Tik-Tok To Serve As A ‘Twitter Killer!’

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Silicon Valley, you are pathetic. Tik-Tok is proof of concept, all you need to tweak it a little bit so it can become a Twitter Killer. Why is this so difficult to see?

It’s so simple. So very simple. Now, I’m not saying you would have to do videos on such a service, but the current Twitter implementation of video is piss-poor.

There’s at least a $1 billion market for a native-video discussion service that is essentially Tik-Tok but for news. Why no one has done this, I don’t know. I guess it’s not sexxy.

Imagining A New ‘Video Gawker’ #startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

When I was in Seoul, there was this nebulous little group of creative-types who were doing Broad City-like videos with their phones 15 years ahead of their time. It just occurred to me that it would be cool if you did something like that today. Or, put another way, I think there’s both an audience and a marketplace for something of a micro-video version of Gawker.

If I lived in New York City (which I don’t) and if I had money (which I don’t) I would found a Website devoted to combining the best of The Daily Show and Broad City. Instead of fictional little adventures around New York City, I would find really funny young people to do field pieces about “real” street news.

These field pieces would be no more than two or three minutes long and would have a blog post associated with them that would flesh out the story for nerds who would actually like to, like, read and stuff. The trick is, of course, to find really funny young people who are so young that they aren’t already going the YouTube star route out of UCB.

Anyway, absolutely no one listens to me and I’m just letting off steam while I charge my batteries to get back to writing my novel.

Here’s the video where I gradually came up with this idea.

The Vision Thing — A #Startup Codenamed ‘Irredenta’

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Gab is this insane cesspool of hate frequented by alt-Right mouthbreathers. But it does fill a niche. And as, such, I suggest that there are a lot — a lot — of Twitter users who, if they were given a viable option would at least try it out.


I’m old enough to remember the TV show America Held Hostage, which would turn into Nightline. I’m saying we’re in a similar crisis and, as such, have a similar opportunity. But there’s more to the story than just that.

A lot of different things are happening right now and I suggest that a new app could address than all in one fell swoop. People want a viable option to Twitter. A growing number of people, given the opportunity, would be interested in an app that would help facilitate massive protests against the Trump Administration to end it once and for all. And, lastly, the online news business is suffering a historic contraction.

So, the app I propose, which goes under the codename Irredenta, would address all those issues. The app would be designed in such a way that you would, essentially, pay a core group of users to break news using it. But, get this, much like the Usenet of yore, you have inline editing of that content so the comments are actually inside full page posts using groups. Or, put another way, that’s what you work towards. That’s what you grow into.

The basic app would be a lot like Crooked Media’s Vote Save The People but with a news service of sorts attached to it. It really isn’t that hard to imagine. You just need just the basic vision and resources to pull it off.  I have the vision, I just don’t have anything else.

So, unless I get some traction on this, I’m probably going to shut up about it soon enough.


Trump’s Loss Of The Mandate of Heaven & A Radical Resistance #Startup Code-Named ‘Irredenta’

By Shelton bumgarner
@bumgarls

Trump’s defeat at the ends of Nancy Pelosi today jiggles things in more ways that one. In a sense, the jig is finally up for Trump. He’s always been one of those bullshit artists who get way, way, farther than they should because they’re so devoted to, and so good at, “owning the moment.”

Given that Trump could very well face a challenge from the Right on immigration — I’m looking at you Rep. Steve King — our perception of Trump has enter a new phase. Trump’s neo-Reagan mystique has been popped, shattered, ended, however you want to couch it. Trump now enters his Jimmy Carter II phase. But it’s doubtful it’s going to last too long, unless, of course, the “resistance” becomes the Radical Resistance.

The Radical Resistance is more focused, more organized and more ideological than the “resistance.” As I keep saying, it seems to me that we could get a core group of people to go all 300 on Trump in defense of the Republic, then we could, on a political level, end this surreal tragic nightmare once and for all.


We design an app, one that I would code name “Irredenta,” that on one level is a Radical Resistance response to Gab, on another a “Twitter Killer,” on another a way of mobilizing and informing the Radical Resistance and on yet another way disrupt the news business online. This is such an obvious solution to a number of problems that is kind of bothers me that nothing will ever be done about it because, well, no one listens to me. Also, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn.

The irredenta app I’m thinking of would be marked as both a Radical Resistance version of Gab and means to organize and inform the Radical Resistance should the opportunity arise when people are willing to, actually, like, take to the streets on a regular basis to get rid of this tyrant. I honestly don’t believe this would happen for no other reason than it takes time to design an app and if we don’t do it now, we won’t be ready when the opportunity arises.

A lot depends on how long Trump lasts. If he survives into 2021 and beyond, then the protest app becomes very much more possible. Though, as I keep saying, MX (AR / VR) is hurtling towards us so there is a very narrow window of opportunity for the Irredenta app. By the end the next recession MX will reset the media equation online and, well, then we’ll be talking about that.

This is one of this times when I come up with something really cool and interesting and because I’m little more than a rando Internet crank relative to, say, the bluecheck liberals of Crooked Media, no one will listen to me or if they do they’ll steal the idea and not give me any credit.

But fuck those guy. This is a cool, timely idea.

I just wish someone would listen to me.

A Call To Arms: Design An App To Disrupt Politics & Prose

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

As I keep noting, three things are currently happening at the same time and if you simply had a little vision, you could make a lot of money AND disrupt both politics and communication of news online.

Here are the forces at work — 1) Twitter sucks 2) you need a way to mobilize and inform a Radical Resistance to Trump 3) the online news business is in serious contraction because it’s base on a lie.

So, what you do is, think completely out of the box. There is a very narrow window of opportunity for an app to do as I suggest before the end of the next recession when MX (AR / VR) takes over everything and resets the the entire media equation not seen since about 1996.

Really, it would be so easy. The app would initially be marketed to the millions of people who are growing alienated by the spread of Right wing hate speech on Twitter. Tell them it’s a Twitter Killer for liberals. (Or the liberal-progressive answer to Gab.)

Here’s the outside-the-box angle. You use the basic general concepts of Usenet in such a way that seed the service with actual journalists who get paid to break news via the app. (Yes, this sounds a lot like Reddit in its own way, but if you have any idea of how much more robust this vision is, you wouldn’t say that.)

I have talked at great length about this and it’s very well developed in my head. But I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. But the idea is pretty obvious given the three things I mentioned.

But no one listens to me.

A Perfect Storm — #MX & Disrupting Twitter With A Startup To Facilitate Radical Resistance To Trump


By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

We are at an inflection point. The online media business is contracting because it’s based on a 20-year-old lie. At the same time, growing numbers of people know they’re angry about Trump but they can’t quite articulate what it is they feel.

I propose that you could use the passion of what I call The Radical Resistance to found a news and mobilization app that, if designed properly could disrupt Twitter in a big way during this small window of opportunity before MX revolutionizes everything and hits the media reset button.

I have explained this in great detail before (below, and elsewhere.) Anyway, it can be done, just someone needs to be willing to throw cash at the idea.

It goes without saying that a lot of people are unhappy with both Twitter and Trump. It seems pretty obvious as well that if you did a venn diagram of these two groups the overlap would be the core of a new social media service designed to not only kill Twitter, but bring down Trump.

So, even though I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, here’s how I feel you could accomplish these two goals in tandem.

First, you designed a service from the ground up specifically meant to have a robust on-boarding system as well as one that once and for all fixed the problem of the online harassment associated with bots and trolls. It would likely be popular almost instantly. That is the crux of the weakness with Twitter. Twitter is dead in the water in some respects and it wouldn’t take that much to kill it if you simply addressed the major problems with Twitter in an intuitive, effective manner.

An unintended consequences of all of this is a lot of celebrities, though leaders and content providers who are extremely unhappy with Twitter would flock to a service that gave them a better experience from the get-go. They, in turn, would bring with them a lot followers who simply wanted the opportunity to engage them like they currently do on Twitter.

Meanwhile, a lot of people know that should Trump finally do the unconscionable and fire Bob Mueller, that they’re going to want to take to the streets. But the United States isn’t South Korea. If you wanted to bring down Trump through people power, it would be a complex, national affair. You’d have to keep the protests legal and regular for no other reason than if you just protested without the proper permits, etc., you’d just get arrested.

Bringing down a president with people power in the States would be require the single greatest popular unrest the country has ever seen. It’s the kind of thing social media was designed for, but never, to date, used to do so in a developed country. So, I believe, you’d need a whole new service designed to specifically facilitate massive, regular nationwide protests if you wanted to bring down Trump.

Put these two concepts together in a social media startup, and I think it would be pretty effective. It would serve as the core of a Twitter killer that would blow up pretty quickly.

The question, of course, is how to actually do it. Probably crowdfunding it our best bet. So, it’s likely that we’d have to wait for Trump to fire Mueller before all the pieces fell into place. I just can’t see an angel investor being willing to shell out the money needed to design such a service. But if Trump finally swerved into a full blown autocrat, I think Americans wouldn’t stand for it. America isn’t Turkey, for Christ’s sake.

One feature I think a lot of content providers would like in my vision of this is that Verified account holders would have more power than the average user. I think if you gave specific power to Verified account holders, they would feel they were stakeholders in the service and their engagement would be higher.

As I have said before, I think you should divide the service into Groups that are divided into threaded Discussions. There would also be a strong video element to the service, whereby you’d be able to have four-way video chat with people in the context of a threaded discussion. This doesn’t even begin to address the features you’d need to facilitate people organizing mass protests.