Tag: startups

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.

Mulling How To Share Posts In A Usenet Concept-Based Twitter Killer

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

One thing people have come to expect is the ability to share information they like within a social media environment. With Facebook it’s Sharing, with Twitter it’s Retweeting. With Reddit you can “vote up” content you like.

So, the question is, how would you do this with a Usenet concept-based service. This is an interesting, and crucial, question. You can’t have people vote up posts because that’s a direct rip-off of Reddit and people would see it as such. Meanwhile, Sharing like on Facebook is problematic. The best I can think of right now is some combination of “Starring” and Sharing. You might Star a post you liked, and Share it on your “Wall.” Or something. You would have to think of some way whereby people would feel like they were interacting with the content.

This gets into the whole concept of how you would represent Trending Topics. You would have to do in a dramatically different manner than Twitter and I think you could figure out something. I was thinking a pull-down menu that would be feature rich and give you all kinds of different options that either Twitter already has or are unavailable with Twitter.

Anyway, all of this is moot because I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. But it is interesting to dwell on.

Use Case: The New York Times & A Social Media Platform Based On Usenet Concepts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m bored, so here’s another use case for my social media platform concept that is just my personal daydream. Imagine there’s some breaking news about the Trump Administration. The New York Times writes a story about it and if my concept were real, they could shoot the entire story into the platform.

Here’s where the cool stuff happens. The game changing stuff.

See, not only could they keep the formatting and advertising of the original article, but users would be able to inline edit the content (in other words quote the article directly and write within it) in such a way that people would be engaging with both the content and the advertising in manner that could be profitable for both The New York Times and the service that enabled the whole thing to begin with.

I would say, at least from a content producer’s standpoint, that’s the most compelling use case of this proposed service. It’s really cool. It’s a completely different way of using content. Too bad no one listens to me and this just me daydreaming in a public manner.

Some More Mulling Of This Service As A ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have written at length — and talked at length on Instagram — about this concept, so I’m only writing this because I’m bored and don’t want to go to bed just yet. But this concept is really, really compelling. And, yes, I know: I should just shut up and learn to code.

I am not going to do that. Fuck you.

Anyway, here are some interesting observations about this proposed service in the context of existing discussion options online.

I use Twitter a lot now after years of disinterest and I think that’s probably why I keep thinking about this concept. I keep looking at Twitter and thinking to myself, “There has go to be a better way. In fact, there is and it’s name is Usenet. And let’s throw in IRC for good measure.”

The issue for me is Twitter is like a raging, uncontrolled river of information but not a lot of knowledge. It seems to me that if you leaned on thought leaders more, gave them goodies because they were verified account holders, that that would draw them in big time and they would really, really love this service as I have dreamed it up.

I like how this service aims to do the same thing Twitter does but in a much more controlled fashion. You would have the same huge amount of information pouring, but it would be controlled. It would be controlled because you would have a stream of live chat in the context of a Group that you would interact with, then should the owner of the Group decide to begin a thread with a post, you would have the option of interacting with that post in a threaded manner as well as having the option of inline editing what the thought leader had written originally.

All of this is all thought out already because I’m simply using what I remember from Usenet and updating it about 20 years. There isn’t a lot new in what I’m proposing, but the way I want to implement it I think is pretty cool. There are just so many different aspects to this that I really like.

I like how you self-select by joining a Group. I like how you have the quick reaction time of a live chat as well as the option of interacting with a post by a thought leader. I’m sure there are quirks here and there on a social level that I’ve not thought through as well as maybe I should, but I think the general concept is exceptionally strong.

I really like it, if nothing else.

Direct Comparisons Between A Service Based On Usenet Against Twitter & Reddit

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

So, right now, you have Twitter and Reddit when it comes to what I would call “public” discussion online. Facebook is a whole different type of discussion because the engagement between individual users is higher. In other words, you’re more likely to know the person you’re talking to on Facebook as opposed to Reddit or Twitter.

Let’s do a direct run down of the service I’m daydreaming about against the services it would compete against, Twitter and Reddit.

To me, Twitter is a piece of shit that just happens to have lucked out with Trump’s election. It gives people something to use on a daily basis to interact with strangers they agree with on the latest Trump screw up. But imagine a service that is built, from the ground up with not only the ability to have live, archived text chat with people you don’t know, but you also have the ability to in-line edit posts from your favorite thought leader. And, eventually, you might even be able to do that with content from major publications.

That’s pretty cool.

Twitter is so bad for so many different reasons that it’s difficult for me to articulate it. The major problem with Twitter is it’s a constant deluge of directionless information caused by absolutely no subdivisions beyond poorly implemented “Lists.”

It would be cool if you had even more immediacy than Twitter in addition to the ability to have inline editing of content from others with a full page to make your case. Now, Reddit, in a sense, has something akin to what I’m thinking, but not really. You have something like Groups and you have a main post that you can comment on, but as Reddit is currently designed, you don’t have inline editing of a post in the context of a thread. I find that really fucking annoying. And as far as I know Reddit doesn’t have any of the features of IRC I’d like to integrate, either. Again, one threat to this service would be either Twitter or Reddit redesigning their services to co-op any of the cool stuff you come up with it. But that’s life, bruh. You’d have to keep innovating to combat that. Reddit is more likely to come at you than Twitter, I suspect.

But, whatever. I don’t know. None of this is ever going to happen. But, as I keep saying, it’s fun to talk about. I really love this concept. I wish I knew how to code. I’d start on it right now. But, alas, I’m just a writer you likes to daydream.

Of Podcasting, Soundcloud & The Music Industry In The Context Of Usenet Concepts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, the reason why I think you could use a service based on the concepts of Usenet and IRC to revolutionize not only the publishing business but music is because if you see these concepts the way I do, then there are any number of use cases you can think up.

So, this post is about the use case of music industry, podcasting and this service.

The interesting thing about this concept when it comes to podcasting and music is it’s a natural fit. If, as part of developing the site, you were to buy Soundcloud on the cheap and integrate it into the service you could do some pretty cool things. I say this because the key to making the service a success is finding different communities to use as source of growth marketing.

Establishing this platform as one where you could discuss podcasts and music would be pretty cool. The entire service would be designed to encourage debate and discussion and pretty much given the passions associated with music would be a perfect fit. People love to talk about music and podcasting and if you made it so you could actually do a podcast native to the service, all the better. Though, because I’m a former user of the now defunct video service known as Blab if I had anything to do with it, I would try to take things to the next step and use video as much as possible.

But imagine Pod Save America dropping on the service. There would be a Crooked Media post beneath the podcast and people could inline edit that content in a threaded discussion as well as have an archive live-text chat about it as well. This is pretty powerful stuff on a conceptual level, if nothing else. While I’m sure these concepts are floating about here and there, I can’t think of a site like the one I imagine that would do it all in one place seamlessly.

Or the latest hip-hop video drops and you get to not only watch the video, but get a full-page ad for merch and tickets to venues where the performer in the video is going to sing. That’s pretty cool, I think. And because people are interested in this content in the first place, they won’t mind that they’re interacting with an enormous ad while they talk about the music.

It seems pretty obvious that EDM would be the perfect subculture to promote this service to at first for no other reason than they have a huge amount of passion and they would love the ability to talk about venues and music and what not. Now, I know there are probably plenty of sites that already exist that allow them to do just that, but I like to think the service I’ve come up with would be so cool as to draw at least a sizable amount of those people to the service.

But, as I said, no one cares what I have to say. This is just daydreaming. I will grow tired of it soon enough, but for the time being it’s relaxing to look at this concept from different angles.