Twitter is the champion of user generated content and engagement. It lowered the barrier to entry for “content creation” and engagement by shortening it to the length of an SMS.
This small tweak of a tweet resonated with the masses. Since most people don’t have the time to engage in proper blogging or don’t consider themselves great writers, Twitter created a platform where you don’t need to be Shakespeare to enter into a dialogue. You share your thoughts in 140 characters. In fact, you do not even need to create anything new; you can just retweet or share a link that appeals to you. However this breakthrough came with its downsides. Tweeting, or micro-blogging has since become the lowest common denominator of communication and self-expression. In attempting to raise engagement as much as possible they lost the possibility for quality expression.
Yet, 140 characters just doesn’t cut it!
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey himself considers a tweet “a short burst of inconsequential information.”
Thus, a tweet is not designed to connect the dots or paint a big picture for your audience. It is reductionist, simplistic and fleeting. This doesn’t mean that Twitter has no value. It just means that people who crave in-depth engagement with a given topic and big-picture thinking need to look elsewhere.
At “edgee”, we pondered, developed and iterated for months to create THAT place. We cater to those who want to connect the dots and created a new format , called an “edgee,” that shows the big picture.
It is designed to be engaging, relevant and easy to use. We dreamed of a place where everybody could share quality ideas on their passions in an easy but non-reductionist way. This is what we came up with:
The following four tenets make edgee truly unique:
1. A new way of expression
As you can see, edgee adopted Twitter’s biggest virtue. People can express themselves through links — content other people created. On our platform, users can embed any type of media into an edgee with one click.
This makes sense, because why should you start from scratch when you can stand on the shoulders of others? On the one hand, this saves time and on the other, there is a high probability that somebody else already wrote, drew or recorded something that perfectly carries an emotion, thought or idea you have. But this is only the beginning!
2. Connect the dots
Other social networks stop here. A user posts a link and it drowns in the real-time newsfeed. edgee doesn’t stop. We know that if you are passionate about a topic, you have heard, read or seen more about this topic. You want to add more than just one link! On an edgee, no item stands by itself. The ingredients for an edgee transcend media verticals. You can add your favorite books, essays, photos, podcasts, drawings, movies, films, Medium posts etc. or your own works to an edgee.
Time to get creative and bring together various video, text, audio or image files into a cohesive new format.
3. Make it your own!
You added all this amazing content you love to an edgee. Now what? Simple. You make it your own!
We allow users to bring it all together, creating a window into your world for others to see. We want users to infuse their own thoughts, vision and opinions into content and really make it their own. To us, this is a matter of interaction and presentation:
a. Reposition: Inside an edgee, a user can reposition items via simple drag and drop in our flexible grid system.
Do you remember mixtapes? How you picked this perfect opening and then built upon that? It’s the same with an edgee, you can think carefully about the order of items for the mood or image you want to create. Hence, the positioning itself is of utmost importance.
b. Emphasize: Do you want to show what’s important to you? With a single click you can enlarge items and emphasize them to show which ones matter the most.
c. Annotate: Some items just cannot stand alone. Annotate an item and tell others why it matters.
d. Notate: Maybe you want to add some longer original thinking. Add a note, unlimited in size, to give your take on the collection or just to add a few words on the connection between two items.
As you can see, creating an edgee transcends current forms of tweeting, pinning and blogging. edgee provides something different, the big picture, which of course can and should be shared across all social networks.
4. A playground for the curious
An edgee can be about anything that warrants a big picture:
A journalist uses an edgee to provide nuance and background information about a story. A history teacher creates an edgee to teach about the Berlin Wall and show primary sources to her students. An activist creates an edgee about Occupy Wall Street and shares it across his network. An artist creates an edgee as inspiration about street art. Students create an edgee to collaborate on projects by sharing multiple links through the same page. A performer creates an edgee as a promotion page by sharing videos, pictures and articles. An event host creates an edgee to share photos, facts, and anecdotes with friends. Or someone creates an edgee simply to share a passion they have with the rest of the world. We want edgee to be a playground for the curious.
We made edgee to be as easy and flexible as possible, constrained only by the imaginative faculties of the user.
edgee fills a huge void by giving people the chance to create something truly original out of content that already exists. Unlike a blog, edgees are not big, recurring time commitments and don’t get drowned in a real time feed after a few seconds. They are little passion projects about anything that interests you.
Visit www.edgee.com to signup!
[1] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator.html
