Tag: Startup

Idle Mulling Of The #UX #UI Of A ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

If I was going to design a startup to “kill” Twitter and maybe disrupt content distribution online, the below is what would be my stepping off point. That’s pretty much my vision for how to do it, only updated significantly for modern social media users needs.

So, that’s my vision. I wish someone would take me up on it, but because I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, no one ever will. But I feel there is still a minor window of opportunity to do such a startup. I wish I could get some traction on this. It would be so cool if I could.

There are some pretty big issues that would have to be address. Chief amongst them being how would you manage an enormous amount of people using the service. The only thing I can think of is you would limit who could actually post to the service in some way. You would have to earn the right to do that.

A lot of people probably wouldn’t like that, but that’s the only way you you base a service on the old concepts of Usenet and have it work. But one issue is, I think the below is what people actually want Twitter to be. They want a real discussion platform. Which, sadly, Twitter is not.

Idle Rambling About A ‘Twitter Killer’ From A #UX #UI Standpoint

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Below are some examples of later stage Usenet readers that inspire my vision for a Twitter “killer.” It just makes too much sense. If you used these Usenet clients’ designs as a stepping off point for a Website, I think you could actually get some traction. As you can tell, they don’t look anything like Reddit and I think if you gave it some thought, you could do something really cool.

As you can tell, there’s a lot you could use. If you updated this client design into something that was UX of a Website designed to “kill” Twitter and disrupt the online content distribution industry, I think something really cool could happen.

But as I keep saying, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn.


Disrupting The Newspaper Business With A #Startup Based On Usenet

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

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.

Below are some videos where I talk about this at length.

‘An Uber For News’ — How To Save Newspapers From Themselves #Startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

So, I’ve come up with what I think is a really cool way to “disrupt” the newspaper business. Here’s how it would work — the service to the uninitiated would, on the surface, seem a lot like Reddit. But it would, in fact, be much more than that.

The service would be a social media platform designed not only to “kill” Twitter, also reward producers of great content. All the reporters who have been laid off from newspapers would find a new home with this service which would lay out clear metrics for how you could make money. You would not only be “graded” by your fellow users for the content you provided, you would also credit for how many clicks and shares you got within the system. Using this formula your pay would be worked out for each article you contributed to the system.

Once you became a Verified Account holder, you might also garner additional remuneration for various things associated with the Groups and Conversations you created.

It’s really a win-win situation because a lot of people who are fed up with Twitter would flock to a service which actually rewarded people for producing quality content. Of course, a lot of people who use Reddit would say that the service was a rip off of it, when, in fact, it was actually an update of the old Usenet service.

I feel this is a pretty cool concept and if I had a few hundred thousand dollars laying around, I would try to establish the startup myself. But I can’t code and don’t want to learn, so this is just a daydream. I find the whole concept fascinating.

V-Log: Thoughts On A ‘Twitter Killer’ #startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Instead of going into great detail via text about all of this, here are some videos I’ve done. I think you’ll think they’re pretty cool. I’ve already written a lot about this before, so again I know no one will notice or care.

Enjoy

How To Use Time Magazine As The Core Of A ‘Twitter Killer’ #startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The word on the street is that Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated are for sale. Rather than let some insane Right wing nutjob buy them and turn them into a mainstream Brietbart, why not do something really innovative. Why not think outside the box and turn those the writers and editors of those three publications into something really unique.

The thing about Twitter is a lot of really powerful writers and editors use it as some sort of public salon where they sit around and talk about issues of the day. What if you designed a “Twitter Killer” made up of Time and its sister publications that had a similar purpose to Twitter but was much, much better.

It seems so obvious. It would be really cool and I feel it would be a near instant hit. What you do is you completely re-imagine Time. You accept that the the print magazine is doomed and have all the content that the magazine’s writers and editors otherwise produce dumped into your new Twitter Killer.

You could also use those very same writers as the seed group of users. They would invite their friends as you grew the service and it would help the service star off on the right foot. This is such an obvious application of Time that I don’t understand why someone with a lot of money doesn’t run with it.

Twitter sucks so bad that if you did as I suggest, it would be quite popular, quite quickly I believe. As I keep suggesting, you design the service by leaning on the concepts of Usenet from 20 years ago. But no one listens to me and the social media space isn’t exactly bumping anymore. People with all the money are too interested in AR, VR and automation to worry about something so blase.

But I really do like the concept. It’s really strong.

A Social Media #Startup Using Usenet Concepts Fixes The Twitter Engagement Issue

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

There is a big flaw with Twitter, and that’s the issue of engagement. The only way to get pretty good engagement with a tweet is to respond in thought provoking way to something someone famous has already tweeted. It’s much more difficult to get high engagement if you’re just some rando tweeting along on your own account. Basing a social media startup on Usenet in the way I envision it would definitely fix that problem, I think.

Saving SnapChat — The Complete Vision

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

If I was tasked with saving SnapChat, here is what I would do.

The first feature I would roll out as soon as I could would be robust discovery of people you didn’t know who happened to be proximity to you. So, there would be a feature where by you could see everyone on SnapChat at a bar you were in and you’d be able to “poke” them or something in such a way that they would know you were interested in them. You could then become SnapChat friends and send snaps to each other before you met IRL.

Maybe SnapChat has something like this already I just don’t know about it, but I know if it did have this feature I would be a heavy user of it. (As it stands, I barely use SnapChat, so there could be any number of different features I don’t know about.)

After I did this, I would slowly roll out a whole lost of features that would be difficult for my competitors to implement. Some of this would require the app having a desktop component that it currently doesn’t have. So, I would give people the ability to have live text chat with people as well as recorded video conferencing. I would also figure out a way to bring in many of the concepts of Usenet that made it popular 20 years ago. These changes would not come easy and they would be controversial with the user base, to say the least.

But as it stands, SnapChat is doomed. Instagram is going to kill SnapChat unless it innovates and innovates rapidly, so that’s why I even introduce these concepts at all.

Anyway, that’s just the barest skim of what I think should be done. I may come back to this, depending on my mood.

A Very Out-Of-The Box Vision For Saving SnapChat

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have already mentioned this, but it’s fun to talk about so I’m going to write about it some more. If SnapChat were to re-imagine itself completely in the manner I have suggested, that of turning itself into something akin to a video discussion service with a new text aspect, I think something pretty cool could happen.

Here’s how I would do it.

If it were possible, I would base the new SnapChat on video conferencing. I used the now defunct Blab.im a lot a few years ago and if SnapChat were to leverage its existing user base to go in that direction I think it would reap significant rewards. But there’s a lot I don’t know.

Video would still be at the core of the service, but there would be so much more than that available. The whole point of this new SnapChat would be to get you to have video conferences with your friends that others could watch. It wouldn’t be so much about sending video email to your existing friends as it would be making new friends. That’s a pretty powerful concept, I think. If you had a robust discovery feature you could make all kinds of new friends.

But the point is, there would also be a powerful IRC (AOL Chatroom) text feature in this new service. And threaded Usenet-like post discussions. All of this wouldn’t be rolled out overnight, of course, but you would gradually work towards a completely new vision for SnapChat that I think users would really love. Again, the only reason why I even suggest SnapChat doing this is if it doesn’t innovate and innovate quickly, the whole thing is doomed.

I don’t know if its even technically feasible to do a massive amount of video conferencing in the way I suggest. Blab was never able to get more than, maybe, 100 people in a room to watch a four way video conference, so it may not even be technically possible to get thousands of people watching even a two way video conference. But let’s suppose they used proprietary technology or something.

They would have to expand onto the desktop to truly have this vision become a reality. It would be really cool to have a service whereby you had not only recorded video conferencing with an audience, but a feature rich text environment as well. I have talked at great length about my vision both on this Website and on Instagram. Like, I’ve done thousands of little Instagram videos about this subject. I just take a lot of pictures now, but the videos are still there on my account for better or worse.

The only reason why I even think SnapChat would be interested in such a completely different vision for their service is they’re in serious risk of becoming moot and if they did something really, really dramatic and revolutionary it may be the only way to survive at all. They have the means, motive and opportunity as they say.

They wouldn’t even have to worry that much about their userbase revolting. SnapChat is dying and if they don’t innovate their way out of this deadend, there won’t be much for them to worry about at all in the first place. But whatever. Like I said, I only even wrote about this because it’s interesting.

The Fate Of SnapChat & A Social Media #Startup Based On Usenet Concepts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I may have talked about this before, but I have nothing else to talk about right now, so we’re going to talk about it again. You see, of all the existing social media networks, SnapChat has the most to lose right now. Instagram is eating its lunch and maybe if SnapChat did something out-of-the-box dramatic it might be able to innovate itself out of certain doom.

I’m thinking, of course, of the social media startup concept I have based on the old Usenet. What if SnapChat took the basic concepts of the platform I’ve talked about at great length and use it to save itself from being eaten by Instagram? I have no clue how exactly they would do it, but right now SnapChat has the means, motive and opportunity to save itself by doing something crazy like completely re-imagining the entire service. What if public snaps were threaded in such way that you could have an intelligent convertation using them? Throw in a new desktop app for the service and all kinds of cool stuff might happen.

But, really, I can’t help but keep thinking about the startup concept I have. It’s just so cool. It’s too bad that I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. It’s weird that we’ve actually gone backward in the last 20 years when it comes the functionality that Usenet once provided. Throw into the mix some IRC functionality and you have the makings of a killer app for sure.

One issue, of course, is would Facebook either co-op the service or buy it out the gate? I think if you made it clear that it was Twitter now Facebook the service was gunning for, then maybe they’d settle for an investment, just like Microsoft did with Facebook many moons ago.

I just really like the idea of bringing back the concepts of Usenet, which were so addictive to me 20 years ago, to modern social media users. But, alas, no one listens to me and if they do they’re just frustrated with me for not being willing to code. This has a lot more to do with me just needed something to talk about than anything else.