Posted 1 year ago
Dec 21st: Kontribit: Sharing reinvented
The 21st day of The Refinement Club’s Advent calendar features Mats André Kristiansen, Andreas Skaranger and Funkbit AS. with their cool concept about social curation. We have been alpha testing their site a little bit and are starting to dig their service. Make sure to opt in for a beta tester spot.
We’ve been thinking about something.
Social networks connect us in fascinating new ways. We all agree on this. Opinions, suggestions or questions can be broadcast to hundreds and thousands simultaneously. This is a good thing — it democratizes the world and it lets good ideas and opinions spread.
However, some social networks (Twitter and Facebook are admittedly easy targets) are a lot like having all your colleagues, dearest family, old friends and classmates together with a crowd of random acquaintances in a big hall where you all just shout at each other from time to time. While some things get picked up and shouted further, other things are lost for those who would love your contribution the most.
Even though everything is about sharing nowadays, it seems that our ways of sharing are not too clever or thought through. We have an alternate approach we’d like to present.
Let us explain with an example.
Let’s say John is really interested in bikes. He knows a few people at his workplace with whom he shares that particular interest. In fact, they are experts in finding photos and articles about bikes, and they are tweeting and mailing great bike content every day. They even share it on Facebook. John really trusts these guys when it comes to bikes, but by following them on Twitter, Facebook and the like, John must also wade through all their other updates about politics, polls and cats every day.
As our friend and following-lists are growing, our social networks are filling up with noise and content that does not matter to us. We believe that content is best shared between small groups of people with similar interests who curate for each other or the world.
Wouldn’t it be cool if John could connect to his colleagues through common interests instead? This would be a different kind of social network — one revolving around interests. This would be a new way to spread things online — not to as many, but to people who really care.
This is why we are building Kontribit. On Kontribit, you collect anything on the web that matters to you. Videos, recipes, great articles, images or something else. We’ll let friends or colleagues help you collect through collaboration. And you can follow collections that you find interesting.
We hope you’ll join us in a search for a better way to share, in a quest for the best content — enabling people to enjoy stuff they care about in the right time and context.
Stay tuned friends!
About us:
Kontribit is devised and designed by Mats André Kristiansen, Andreas Skaranger and Funkbit AS.
Funkbit is a small, Norwegian development company creating awesome stuff for the web and mobile devices. They are skilled enthusiasts focusing on great design and functionality in everything they do, and they love to stay ahead using the latest technology.
Mats André and Andreas are both Art Directors, specializing in social and new media.
Mats André is working at Jimmy Royal, while Andreas is working at Isobar Norway.
*********
Interested in Kontribit? Stay in the loop by following us on Twitter or on Facebook. If you want in, we are handing out invites every now and then. You can declare your interest at http://kontrib.it. (We are letting people in gradually while the site is in its early stages of development.)
Notes