3 ms·

Apply HN: FORUM – A public conversation app

2 points by jaktran 11y ago

getforum.co FORUM is social app available on Android (public bêta) that propose to user to share their thoughts (400 chars max) on any subject they want. The particularity is that each thought can be: - the beginning of a public chat conversation with someone. The conversation will be displayed automatically like it is in a messaging app (whatsapp, messenger, telegram) - the beginning of a long post. If you reply to yourself. The post (or story) will be displayed nicely like a blog/Medium post. - the thought can also be a one shot status like it is in a social network. In other words. Forum propose to unify the experience of a social network(public status), a blogging platform ("thoughts storm"), a messaging app throught just one feature. Everything is a thought, even a comment is a thought. The other particularity of Forum relies also on how the thoughts are classified and accessed within the platform. - Indeed each post can be considered as a mini-website: The user has to write his single thought and reference it with 3 tags before he sends it in the network. - All the community will receive the thoughts of everyone in a Tinder-like stack and will swipe them up or down. (up to upvote, down to pass) This system (tag + swipe) is a crowdsourced way to rank all the content each one of us produce. Which means that the search engine will allow you to find the best thoughts according to the community on any tags combination you want. Search [#movie] [#sf] [#2015] and you'll find the best thoughts/stories/conversations according to the community on this subject. Lastly on Forum, you can follow "tags" (rather than people) and define different stacks of cards based on your tastes. Thanks a lot if you have spent a little moment to read the presentation of my project :-) Don't hesitate to check the site where I explain more in the details the vision I have behind FORUM. I will be happy to anwser all your question, Jak

brudgers 11y ago
How will Forum address the chicken/egg problem commonly faced by new social networks? What painpoints of Twitter, Facebook, etc, does it address?
- jaktran 11y ago
  Thanks to be the first to ask a question Brudgers, here are my answer to your question: For the chicken/egg problem, i didn't figured it out yet. Right now I've created 'news/fake accounts' that provide regularly different types of content (news, photography, quotes...) and I watch how people react (upvotes, comments). This help me to see what kind of people are my very first early users and what do they like. I will hopefully narrow down a specific type of content and market the app on this specific niche. I also update the features (erasing and adding new features) according to how people use the app. Althought the app is working (public beta) I'm still in an early phase of observation and iteration. My vision of the app is quite clear though. Concerning the painpoints and differences with other social networks: - CORE VALUE DIFFERENCE OF FORUM The contents you see on Facebook and Twitter depend on people you are following. Which mean that if your are liberal, you are most likely to have liberal friends on Facebook and follow liberal opinion leaders on Twitter, same goes for conservative people. And you can extends this issue on other fields of interest. Which mean that even if you get informed, you have always a biais point of view on the news. If we really want to connect people, it is just not about technology and device but it is about creating dialogue and conversation between people who don't think the same way. My belief is that the best way to convey an information is through contradiction and perspective because this empowered the reader, and force him to find his opinion himself. And this can be done through conversation. (That is why on Forum, you simply don't follow people, but you can follow topics) This manifest itself through en experience around conversation. To put it simply. Forum is a public messaging app. Everybody can see the chat of everybody. - DIFFERENCE WITH FACEBOOK: Forum aims to provide a more simpler and unified experience. On Facebook, you have 4 types of content. - 1 the status - 2 the comment on a status - 3 the Facebook note (similar to the medium story) - 4 the message in Messenger Which mean that you have 3 specifics product for each use case (facebook status/comment feature, facebook Note, Messenger) I want to emphasis on one point. No matter what type of product you use, as an individual you simply want to provide an information/opinion, and to get an information/opinion. Boiling down to this key idea, on Forum, you have only one feature: posting a thought(400 characters long) according to how you use it, a thought can be seen as a status, a comment, a paragraph in a long story or a message in a conversation (or all these at the same time)
- jaktran 11y ago
  Here is a more convenient way to understand this project https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q it's a 2/3 min demo video of Forum
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Thanks. Perhaps at this stage, a diagram mapping swipes to actions, might more clearly orient a person unfamiliar with Forum with it's functionality and operations. Because the linear format of video can struggle to convey the spatial component of an application's architecture and interaction. Keep in mind that the video shows an expert user and new users will be novice users.
    - jaktran 11y ago
      Got it, thanks for this feedback Brudgers
vit05 11y ago
I like the initial idea, but I think this could be too similar to Reddit.
- jaktran 11y ago
  Hi vit05, thanks for your comment, I will try to explain why Forum is very different from Reddit. actually most social networks (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook...) offer more or less the same functionalities (post content, comment/like content, follow people, chat, create groups, search content...). It is ofen hard to explain the difference between those three, but once one try each once, the differences appear to be obvious. And it is all about the experience and how those functionalities interact with each other. Forum proposes the same functionalities than those social networks but differentiates itself by the way those functionalities are assembled together. I would be very thankful if you can give a try to the app or have a look on the few articles I wrote about this project : https://medium.com/the-genesis-of-forum https://medium.com/the-genesis-of-forum maybe you will see that it is very different from Reddit. -------------- One thing about the experience of Forum is that it aims to be a publishing platform like Medium, where you can published long stories, simply by posting 'thoughts' (or comments) successively. Even if you can do that on Reddit, the UX between a Medium Story and a Reddit long post is definitly not the same. Forum aims to provide the UX experience of a Medium Post in a more "mingle" way. A second thing is: Imagine you can read other's people chat between 2 peoples not in a "comment" UX way but in a "messaging" way like Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, Kik... While Reddit doesn't provide this experience, Forum provides it. Hope this is helpful
  - vit05 11y ago
    I will give it a try. It really looks more smooth.
    - jaktran 11y ago
      Thanks, I have just made a 2 min video demo, maybe you can check it : https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q
jaktran 11y ago
Here is a 2/3 min demo video of this app : https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q

2 points by jaktran 11y ago

brudgers 11y ago

How will Forum address the chicken/egg problem commonly faced by new social networks? What painpoints of Twitter, Facebook, etc, does it address?

jaktran 11y ago
Thanks to be the first to ask a question Brudgers, here are my answer to your question: For the chicken/egg problem, i didn't figured it out yet. Right now I've created 'news/fake accounts' that provide regularly different types of content (news, photography, quotes...) and I watch how people react (upvotes, comments). This help me to see what kind of people are my very first early users and what do they like. I will hopefully narrow down a specific type of content and market the app on this specific niche. I also update the features (erasing and adding new features) according to how people use the app. Althought the app is working (public beta) I'm still in an early phase of observation and iteration. My vision of the app is quite clear though. Concerning the painpoints and differences with other social networks: - CORE VALUE DIFFERENCE OF FORUM The contents you see on Facebook and Twitter depend on people you are following. Which mean that if your are liberal, you are most likely to have liberal friends on Facebook and follow liberal opinion leaders on Twitter, same goes for conservative people. And you can extends this issue on other fields of interest. Which mean that even if you get informed, you have always a biais point of view on the news. If we really want to connect people, it is just not about technology and device but it is about creating dialogue and conversation between people who don't think the same way. My belief is that the best way to convey an information is through contradiction and perspective because this empowered the reader, and force him to find his opinion himself. And this can be done through conversation. (That is why on Forum, you simply don't follow people, but you can follow topics) This manifest itself through en experience around conversation. To put it simply. Forum is a public messaging app. Everybody can see the chat of everybody. - DIFFERENCE WITH FACEBOOK: Forum aims to provide a more simpler and unified experience. On Facebook, you have 4 types of content. - 1 the status - 2 the comment on a status - 3 the Facebook note (similar to the medium story) - 4 the message in Messenger Which mean that you have 3 specifics product for each use case (facebook status/comment feature, facebook Note, Messenger) I want to emphasis on one point. No matter what type of product you use, as an individual you simply want to provide an information/opinion, and to get an information/opinion. Boiling down to this key idea, on Forum, you have only one feature: posting a thought(400 characters long) according to how you use it, a thought can be seen as a status, a comment, a paragraph in a long story or a message in a conversation (or all these at the same time)
jaktran 11y ago
Here is a more convenient way to understand this project https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q it's a 2/3 min demo video of Forum
- brudgers 11y ago
  Thanks. Perhaps at this stage, a diagram mapping swipes to actions, might more clearly orient a person unfamiliar with Forum with it's functionality and operations. Because the linear format of video can struggle to convey the spatial component of an application's architecture and interaction. Keep in mind that the video shows an expert user and new users will be novice users.
  - jaktran 11y ago
    Got it, thanks for this feedback Brudgers

vit05 11y ago

I like the initial idea, but I think this could be too similar to Reddit.

jaktran 11y ago
Hi vit05, thanks for your comment, I will try to explain why Forum is very different from Reddit. actually most social networks (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook...) offer more or less the same functionalities (post content, comment/like content, follow people, chat, create groups, search content...). It is ofen hard to explain the difference between those three, but once one try each once, the differences appear to be obvious. And it is all about the experience and how those functionalities interact with each other. Forum proposes the same functionalities than those social networks but differentiates itself by the way those functionalities are assembled together. I would be very thankful if you can give a try to the app or have a look on the few articles I wrote about this project : https://medium.com/the-genesis-of-forum https://medium.com/the-genesis-of-forum maybe you will see that it is very different from Reddit. -------------- One thing about the experience of Forum is that it aims to be a publishing platform like Medium, where you can published long stories, simply by posting 'thoughts' (or comments) successively. Even if you can do that on Reddit, the UX between a Medium Story and a Reddit long post is definitly not the same. Forum aims to provide the UX experience of a Medium Post in a more "mingle" way. A second thing is: Imagine you can read other's people chat between 2 peoples not in a "comment" UX way but in a "messaging" way like Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, Kik... While Reddit doesn't provide this experience, Forum provides it. Hope this is helpful
- vit05 11y ago
  I will give it a try. It really looks more smooth.
  - jaktran 11y ago
    Thanks, I have just made a 2 min video demo, maybe you can check it : https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q

jaktran 11y ago

Here is a 2/3 min demo video of this app : https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q https://youtu.be/Ft7JvfzoF2Q