Tag: Startup

Radical Resistance & The Vision Thing

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is just me playing pretend as to what I would do if given any real power when it came to thinking strategically about how to end this surreal political nightmare the nation finds itself in.

First, I would focus on what, exactly, the ideology of the Radical Resistance is. Though the use of the term “radical” is scary to a lot of people, a lot of other people, do, in fact, feel that Trump is radicalizing them on a political level. That’s why I think it’s inevitable that both Trump will use the term on Twitter for marketing purposes and blue check liberals will nervously oppose its use by fed up members of the now rather vague Resistance because they think it will scare off Republican housewives in the exurbs of Philadelphia. But we’re in a crisis and it seems to me if we design an ideology that makes it clear that the use of the term “radical” is more about walking in the tradition of Reconstruction’s Radical Republicans than it is, say, some crazy radical shit from the 60s. That would take some message management, especially given how hysterical Fox News will be once Trump finally gets round to using Radical Resistance instead of Radical Democrats.

I don’t know who would actually formalize the ideology of the Radical Resistance, which, for me, at least can be summed up as, “Do whatever it takes to get 67 Senators to vote for conviction on impeachment charges.” If you establish that as your “mission statement,” then trying to appeal to #NeverTrumpers who are great writers and thinkers — and know how conservative Senators think — makes a lot more sense. Remember, for me, the whole issue is simply assembling a passionate, focused coalition devoted to the specific political act of removing Trump from office Constitutionally as quickly as possible — preferably immediate.

That’s my personal vision for all of this, at least.

Meanwhile, after I got that settled, Iwhat I would do is design an app much like Vote Save The People from Crooked Media. That would be, going forward, the key to bringing down the Trump regime . I say this because right now we’re in this odd fuzzy world where 60% of the population is slowly beginning to cook with rage over Trump’s tyrannical behavior…but The Establishment is playing by “old rules” where you have to, like, at least pretend to get the lobotomized MAGA mouth breathers to the table before you can broach the subject of impeachment in any real way.

But, by definition, Radical Resistance rejects that view and says so what if we come off as hyperpartisan. It’s like Republicans weren’t potting to impeach President Hillary Clinton as soon as they could for “emails” or whatever else they could pull out of their collective asses.

Anyway, you come up with an app that serves the utilitarian purpose of kind of giving people like me a Deluxe MAGA-Free Twitter where we could plot our moves and mobilize en mass as needed. The app could start off basic and branch out as needed feature-wise. And if you should happen to design a Twitter Killer along the way AND save modern journalism, that would be pretty cool.


The issue at hand is the newspaper business is dying. It seems as though the best way to fix the problem is to completely re-imagine what a newspaper is. Newspapers have always been a platform for distributing news, but over the years they have come to have significantly great cultural meaning than that.

I propose we get down to basics and provide a platform for writers, photographers and videographers to contribute quality content to a social media platform and be paid for it. Now, if you did it right, it’d be a win-win scenario because content providers would get paid and you, the startup, would make money from advertising.

I propose you base your startup loosely on Usenet concepts. I’m the first to say something like that already exists — Reddit — but this would take the Reddit model to the next level in various ways. Producers of quality content would be recognized and monetarily rewarded. They would have to be in possession of a Verified Account, but after that things would be pretty simple.

One a Verified Account holder could start a new Group and within that Group start a new thread, which I call a Conversation. All content would be threaded and based on the Post, which would be multimedia and have a WYSIWYG editor built in. Reddit has kind of moved towards this and that would be a danger — that Reddit would co-opt all your features even if you had a lot of cool ones, but anyway, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, so this is just a daydream.

Shelton Bumgarner

Once you have the app in place, you use it to connect the more motivated members of the Radical Resistance to the average person who might want to use the app for no other reason than it is better designed than Twitter. Population mobilization on the DL, if you will.

Anyway.

But there’s a fatal flaw to this dream — unless something causes us to lurch into a very scary no-end-game-in-sight situation, you could produce the greatest app in history and…meh.

There would have to be a tipping point. And, right now, I don’t see it. We’re just going to muddle along for six more long years.

Feh.

But if you had those two things established already once the opportunity arose, then maybe something might happen. And, yet, like I keep saying, if we don’t get Trump by August 2019, we ain’t gunna get him for a long, long time.

The Vision Thing: Disrupting Journalism With An App

Meh. No one listens to me.

There’s An App For That — How A Radical Resistance Could, In Practical Terms, End The Trump Administration And Accidentally Design A ‘Twitter Killer’

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The macro-level forces at work against an effective Radical Resistance, one with the single-issue goal of impeaching and removing Donald J. Trump, 45 president of the United States, are pretty staggering.

Trump is an avatar for about 37% of the elector that feels historically disenfranchised. Meanwhile, the economy is doing — in relative terms — great, so a lot of people who might otherwise be angry with Trump honestly don’t give a shit. They’re more concerned with Little Johnny’s t-ball match that the fact that the current administration is headed by a treasonous, felonious 72-year-old toddler.

So, if you wanted to politically wargame the situation on a macro level, I have — and have had — at least one suggestion: build an app.

I have proposed building a social media startup designed specifically to facilitate regular massive national protests with the intent of putting pressure on Congress to finally do something about the cancer on the Republic known as the Trump Administration.


Doing such a thing would be very complex and potentially time consuming. But if you designed an app or a site specifically from the ground up to meet the needs of this concept, then I think it would help greatly.

Regular massive protests on a national scale would have to be legal, civil and well organized. I would not want to use Facebook or Twitter because I find them cumbersome and too easily compromised by trolls, bots and MAGA haters who would want to disrupt thing.

Anyway, in my vision of things, the service would be set up like this: You would have Groups that were divided into threaded Discussions. One third of the screen — the right side — would be live text chat. If you wanted to start a threaded discussion with someone in text chat, you just hit a button and invited them into a video chat that could have up to four people in it. This would be done in the context of a Discussion (which would take up the other two thirds of the screen on the left). Below the initial video chat would be a place to write a full page blog post. The whole thing would be threaded and you could have inline editing of someone’s post.

But this is just the basic concept. As time progressed and problems arose that needed to be fixed, the service would evolve to meet these problems. Best of all, after Trump was brought down, the service would be repurposed as something of a “Twitter Killer.”

I suspect the only way to fund this site would be either an angel funder or crowd funding. I doubt you could get a traditional VC to fund it simply because they wouldn’t see how they could make money right away. I believe if you see this site as the core of a potential Twitter Killer, however, it would be a pretty cool investment.

I guess what I’m saying is if the Radical Resistance simply existed in the first place and was organized enough, it could not only maybe bring down the Trump Adminstration via an app, it might also accidently produce a Twitter Killer social media app along the way.

A Feature Rich #UX #UI For A ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just daydreaming.

A Crude Mockup Of My Dream UX / UI For A ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

No one listens to me. But I have given the topic of how to kill Twitter some thought. Maybe too much thought. And, as such, here’s at least one aspect of the service I believe should exist. This image is of a Group and how you would interact with it.

Idle Rambling About An Interesting Possible Feature For A Discussion Platform #Startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is nonsense because no one listens to me, but it seem as though it would be cool if you had the ability to post a full page post into a threaded discussion system and there was a tab feature where you could see a live chat “behind” the the Post. This is one way to have a similar experience as IRC.

Anyway, no one listens to me and I have no money. Here’s a rough mockup:

Of Newspapers & A Better Mouse Trap

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems to me, the newspaper industry has finally reached a level of crisis and contraction that it might be willing to entertain a hail Mary pass strategy for its continued existence. Now, as I say repeatedly, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. As such, absolutely no one, but no one, listens to me.

And, really, maybe they shouldn’t.

I’m just a crank who likes to write at this point and the thing I’ve learned since I came back from Seoul is pretty much to be successful you have to be stable, have money and have some inkling of what your career is. To have such a career involves a complex series of metrics that I, alas, will never be able to attain in any traditional manner.

Having said all that, let’s waste some time and mull how one might save the newspaper industry at this late date. To me, this is a technological problem. So, as such, you need to build a new service from the ground up that not only would “save” newspapers via a rebirth online, but also address the existing issues associated with Twitter and Reddit. This may seem like a tall order, but it’s not really if you give it some thought.

What I would do, if I had enough money, is build an entirely new social media service whose whole reason for existence was to facilitate civil discussion. As such, I would look back to that most ancient of social media services, Usenet, for inspiration. The service would use the Usenet experience as a stepping off point. While Reddit is much like Usenet to some extent, I feel it’s such a ham-handed implementation as to be useless for my needs. It seems to me if you did as I proposed, you would have the following features.

Here are, going from basic to less basic the core features of the service I propose.

Posts
At the center of this service would be Posts. They would be a full page, multimedia and have a rich WYSIWYG editor people could use to write them with. It would be intuitive and robust and would make writing a post a joy to do. Now, in my imagination there would be two aspects to a Post in this service that would make them different — one is a video conference feature and the other is a minimum word count. You would almost be pressured into throwing in a video recorded video chat as part of any Post you wrote. Also, the service would demand you write, say, at least 300 words in a Post before you could put it into the system. This would prevent someone from simply say, “Meh” in a post, or using a post as a tweet-like thing. You might make some specific exceptions, for say, a politician not known for his long, cogent social media activity.

In-line Editing
One critical aspect to all of this would be in-line editing. If you had the write to contribute to the system — more on that later — you would have the ability to in-line edit someone else’s post in the context of a thread. Again, you would have to write a minimum amount in each edit, you couldn’t just say “You suck.” This might take some getting used to for people who are used to Twitter, but it would likely grow on people.

IRC-type discussions
I would study IRC and figure out ways to incorporate public text chat into the system in a big way. I think that might be really addictive if you did it right and would help with engagement on the service in general.

Threads
Now, the thread would also be crucial to this service. Only specific users would be allowed to start a new thread in a Group and this would hopefully significantly increase usability for everyone involved. Only Verified Account holders could start a thread at all. These would be people who the system trusted not to be abusive or go nuts for no reason.

Groups
In my imagination, there would be thousands and thousands of redundant Groups that would be created by people called System admins. These people would be in charge of naming the Groups and it would keep some order to the whole thing. Of all the people in the service, these people would be the most likely to be, well, paid. They would have the most rights within the system and as such the most responsibility as well.

Having said all that, how do newspapers fit into this? Well, it seems to me newspapers as we currently think of them are well on their way out and if you completely re-imagined how the public would interact with online content via the type of service I just proposed, I think that’s how you save newspapers. I could go on at great lengths about my specific vision for newspapers in this context, but no one listens to me and I’m feeling sad that I’ve come up with this great concept and yet nothing will ever be done with it.

Oh well.

=

V-Log: How To #Disrupt The #Newpaper Business With A #SocialMedia #App

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.

In-Line Editing As A Key Feature In A #Startup Meant To #Disrupt The Newspaper Industry

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.

How To Update The #UX #UI Of A Usenet Client To ‘Kill’ Twitter

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Below is the general idea of what I want to update for modern social media needs for a Website that would be marketed as a “Twitter killer.” You’d have to update the concept a lot, but the general concept is there. You’d have at least three panes you would be able to interact with.

The key thing is in the pane that you would use to write posts, you would have a fully WYSIWYG editor and the ability to in-line edit. This opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities when it comes to content distribution online. What if you could inline edit in the context of a threaded discussion? That would be a really powerful new feature for newspapers and magazines online. It would definitely change how people interact with content online.

The thing about it is, this is a pretty well developed concept, so it wouldn’t really take that much to update it for the modern Web. Throw in a modern newsfeed, a feature rich profile page and various other things people expect in social media and you have a real chance to bring down Twitter.

But as I keep saying, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, so this is just a daydream.