Empowering users of social media, crowd-sourced exposure for Hive.
Overview
Did you ever wonder what other social media sites are saying about the topic you are reading about? Wonder if you are hearing all sides of an argument? Maybe there are people making good points that you just cannot see because of the censorship mechanics of the social platform you are on. Each platforms has its pros and cons and its niche of users, but you want to get to the truth! Are you in an echo chamber??
I searched for a social media aggregator for users. I found plenty for publishers to keep track of their engagements. I found some social media search engines that include a few of the most popular, mainstream, sites. The user is usually left to open multiple tabs of their favorite sites and type the same search into each. Of course, this method is a headache to follow on mobile clients.
This project involves a way to streamline the user experience of gathering relevant posts from a number of social media sites and a reliable medium to discuss the topic at hand.
User Story
Frank is a user on exWitter, a social media site that has a huge amount of users. He sees a post about the CEO of exWitter, Evon, and one of his Baby Mamas. Frank sees many comments about how Evon has been wronged by her and should sue the heck out of her to get custody of his baby, after finding out if it really is his, of course. Frank wonders if there is another side of the story, as exWitter's propagation of comments might be a little biased. The last time Evon had a disagreement with users all those users coincidentally lost their "Blue Splat" that lets them earn money from their posts.
Frank clicks the "cross-social" button on his browser (if it is a chrome plug-in), shares the url, or copies and pastes the contents of the post into the cross-social web interface. The app extracts keywords from the post and brings him to a selection of reference discussion posts that have those keywords. He finds one where another user had the same question, or he creates one.
The web app has a user-customizable selection of social media sites to search from, a curated list of notable links, and Frank knows that the replies won't go poof just as he tries to read them.... Frank finds a discussion on a site called WroteIt where someone wrote a parody song about Evon and his Baby Mamas. He has a good laugh and feels satisfied that that was it for dirt on Evon from the community. He submits it to be included in the relevant links portion of the post.
Hive does it Best
Frank goes back to exWitter and replies to the thread, "check out the Reference Discussion on this! I found a song that wraps it up nicely." He does NOT include the link because he knows a little bit about exWitter's visibility algorithm by now. Shrewdly, he replies to himself with the link.
Features
- Reference Discussion: A standard Hive post that conforms to an expected format with a specific tag. (Here is a prototype):
- Notable Posts: Coupled with an archived version, these are selected by the post author as relevant to the discussion.
- Commentary from the Author
- Search Links: A link to each social media site that includes all the keywords. Serves as a starting point for a reader to explore the topic on these sites.
- Reply Link Curation: When a reply contains a link, the author has the option to include it in the post's Notable Posts section
- Tags: Hashtags at the top, selected top nine as Hive Tags.
- Web Site: Reads the post and gives a dashboard feel to exploring other social media sites.
- Plugin: Submits the current post being viewed and submits to the Web Site.
Monetization
This app is meant to be self-sustaining. A portion of the post rewards will go towards maintenance and future development. This will likely be a voluntary beneficiary designation as a default.
Costs include:
- Hosting the server
- Purchase of API access to some social media sites when necessary
Proposal
I intend to develop this on my own if I have to, but funding from the DHF will help clear my schedule to focus on this and give a buffer for expenses until the monetization can cover it.