(disclaimer: SORRY if this is like…forum spam! hahahah. I don’t mean
to be spammy; I’m just an excited individual 
feel free to delete
moderators if this is too off-topic, or should be re-directed to
another place)
Facebook is to Myspace as _______ is to Twitter. We’re trying to fill
in that gap, taking the psychological principles present in so many
sites (answerbag, every message board in existence, second life, yahoo
answers, etc.), and merging with a medium of communication like
Twitter.
We’re designing a website that’s essentially the public sphere
equivalent to Facebook’s private sphere. Facebook is a site where you
can translate all of your real life history and identity online. This
site is a place where you can create a new identity. Yes, it sounds
like the same principles as “Second Life” but the barrier to entry on
that site is extremely high. Using shortform communication to create a
lower barrier platform will enable a global community.
We have a CEO of a tech company that recruits at Berkeley mentoring
us. He’s advised that we get this done within the next 2 weeks while
he’s arranging VC/Angel meetings, but all of our programmers are so
incredibly overloaded. We’re looking for someone with top level design
in Ruby that can take ownership of the high level scripting and make
this into a reality.
Twitter competitors have failed for two main reasons. 1) Not enough
users were willing to move over to the new site. 2) Not enough new
options were present in the new site to make it a worthwhile
investment. We solve both problems that so many other companies
(present.ly, Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, etc.) failed at. And from the way
it looks, the next social media battle is in location-based social
networking (foursquare, Gowalla, etc.) Theyre not even looking this
way.
You can tell we did our research on this one…I’ve personally been
working on this for over a year now.
Weve represent at a technology start-up conference and had exposure
to multiple Venture Capitalist and angel investors. We also presented
at UC Berkeley in late 2010 for a showcase. Were getting our name out
and were ready for the serious next-steps. Its at the point when Im
in over my head, and a product isnt ready to deliver yet. Thats why
Im resorting to you, because I know youre out there somewherethe
one person who will make a difference for our team, and for possibly a
much greater audience.
P.S. More details of the project and what were actually doing in the
follow-up emails. For obvious reasons, it would be uncomfortable
disclosing it in a large google group.