[schiavi]

I have been working in this problem space for the past year or so developing a new kind of social media that I think has some merits. Take away the advertisement model, the public nature of discourse, and replace it with meaningful context-driven one-on-one conversation and I think we might have something. My platform can take any topic and disseminate a discussion to as many one-on-one conversations as people who are willing to participate. https://www.confidist.com -- Would appreciate it if anyone wants to take a look at the current build. Cheers -Nicholas

[davnicwil]

Took a look at your landing page - some immediate feedback - first thing I see is a popup with a video with the title 'the problems with social media'.

I don't think that's the best way to frame what you're trying to do. Don't tell me what it's not or about all the problems with current social media platforms (I already know), just get straight to what your platform does differently. I can then decide for myself if that's better or if I'd prefer it to what's already out there.

[schiavi]

I see your point, but I wonder if that is just the nature of how hyper-aware most people in this community are of the problems. I don't know if that necessarily holds true for the general population. Thanks for the feedback.

[davnicwil]

Very good point and you might be right, but that said perhaps at least your initial audience is going to skew more towards those who are already informed and have opinions on the matter, so it might be something better for later?

That aside, very cool concept and I'll come back and check it out more tomorrow (late here). I find any effort to evolve social media pretty interesting, actually tried (and failed) with an idea in this space myself a couple of years back. It's hard and I hope you succeed. Also noticed from browsing the topics you're doing startup school - me too (Box CI) - good luck with everything!

[schiavi]

Oh, that is a fantastic connection! We should exchange information. If you register I'll have a chance of contacting you or speaking with you on the site. (Spoiler it's mostly me interacting). Best of luck with Box CI, talk soon.

[bjornsteffanson]

For starters, you have a leaderboard. Any sort of number metric or gamification is enough to keep me off a platform.

Edit: I just realized the irony of the above as I type this on Hacker News.

[schiavi]

I hear you. Overtime the gamification systems have been deemphasized as my assumptions in that area have been proven incorrect. The way users earn a badge currently is by completing virtual events thrown by various communities on the platform. The idea being, I wanted some kind of incentive for users who otherwise aren't interested in certain communities or topics to participate in them and to encourage each community to be inviting to the greater Confidist population. Those "rewards" will be changed from being based on completion to being granted by "any" participation in those events. I want to see how that iteration goes. I think without something along these lines the natural self selection around echo chambers is far too great. I think the next step will be to remove leaderboards but allow for these badges to be viewed possibly when interacting with individual users, but not shown globally. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, much appreciated.

[mkr-hn]

HN at least caps downvotes at -4. I also rarely get an upvote unless I put some thought into my comment. The points seem to be a good reflection of quality outside a handful of hot topics.

Compare this to Reddit where I often check the profile of someone who made an atrocious comment (in quality or content), and they have tens or hundreds of thousands of points. I rarely see that on HN.

[ljw1001]

no fault of yours, but if this is really successful it will be bought by facebook and drowned like a pillow case full of kittens.

[schiavi]

Well if it's bought it would be my fault because I would have sold it.