IDEA #37 – Viral Anonymous Positive Comment Network
By Steve Poland • March 5, 2007
Timothy Chen’s idea post No Love No Hate got me thinking. I believe I’m about to say the exact same thing he did, but add to it a bit — I think it’s a great idea, and viral.
The idea is basically that people anonymously write positive comments / stories / etc, which are then sent to others in the system that write a positive comment. Thus, you say something nice and receive something nice back. Or the system could focus on sharing stories — you share a story, send it in, and receive a story back that someone else submitted.
This reminds me of PostSecret — which is a project where people anonymously send in a postcard with a secret of theirs on it. It’s a great project that I think heels a lot of people, gives people an outlet for their secrets, and also empowers readers.
I could see there being an online system of the PostSecret idea (the “web 2.0′ing” of the PostSecret project)– where people anonymously share a secret, which is emailed to others that share an anonymous secret. And/or readers can comment back on the secret and the poster can read those (and possibly reply back). And/or each secret is given its’ own webpage, which readers can comment on to provide some support or guidance (”I don’t know where to turn anymore” and readers could provide support).
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Comments
3 Responses to “IDEA #37 – Viral Anonymous Positive Comment Network”
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Sounds good, a bit like a networked version of http://grouphug.us/
Steve,
Reading your blog for a while – I find it inspiring that you lack the greedy instinct that keeps ideas from being an open resource.
I created something similar to what you talked about a while back, yet haven’t had time to really promote it. http://thoughtfog.com
I’d be wary of doing the whole “hate” thing; just my personal viewpoint that what you put out there you get back. Not sure that I’d want to be a part of building a system that allowed for the issue and receipt of things less than positive.
On the positive tip, however, I think it fantastic to conceptualize the system where you could put out good stuff and get good stuff as well.
One feature I’d like to suggest is some sort of internal accounting system. It would work like this: a user would add a positive story, anecdote, poem, whatever, and that use would get a credit for the contribution. Let’s call it a “PosiCredit”.
It would be very cool if a system could be devised that actually took the contribution and analyzed it. I suppose something similar to a search engines algorithm analyzing of a web page. Then that post would have attached to it a host of metrics that could be used in this next part.
None of us are “up” or “happy” 100% of the time, right? Well, in this system if the user on a down day/time were able to send an email, text message, log into the site (all depending upon where they are when they need it) they could request a deposit from their “account”. And if they don’t have any PosiCredits, that’s okay too, they’ll just have a deficit that they can repay when they are feeling better and have the ability to pay back good works into the system.
And if their request is somehow matched up to the works they have been contributing, that would be cool. Or perhaps they could request a pick me up from a specific category? The person is out, stuck in horrific traffic, so they text “TRAFFIC” to the service, which sees they are requesting SMS, so they send the proper size message, and format for receipt to the requester.
Good stuff going on ’round here!
Go Boldly!