Give me something new
What’s next in social media?
Scroll scroll. Double tap. Like. Love. Retweet. Scroll scroll.
We are in an era of purely consuming content. It’s a mindless activity that I know I am guilty of. It lets me pause my brain and my busy life to mundanely and robotically scroll through an endless feed of disparate content only to stop for a split second if there is an image that jumps out at me. Then back to scrolling.
Living in NYC, and a recent inhabitant of Brooklyn, I am constantly finding myself taking photos, whether it’s of my cats, cool street art, pretty flowers and trees (yes they do exist in NYC!), my food, group gatherings…and the list is endless. You get what I am getting at. With a high-def camera readily accessible on my phone, which is barely ever far from me, I am always capturing moments.
But then what?
Depending on the day, the event, the circumstances I come across, I can take anywhere from a few photos to a slew of disparate photos and videos that span multiple topics. My go to platforms are the following:
Instagram — I must find that one great photo (with the appropriate edits, obvi) to capture the “coolness” of my Brooklyn life.
Instagram stories — Did I take any decent photos or funny candid ones in vertical format? Oh yes, I did. Ok, I will add them to my story.
Snapchat — Wait, I have to post the same thing I posted on IG to Snap? Fine, I’ll post a few. (Just posts one because, well, I don’t feel like doing it again.)
Facebook — Did my Instagram photo connect and post on the Facebook feed? Ok, good. Hopefully I will get a few “Love” responses from my friends.
Twitter — um. No. Don’t have time for that.
Now, what I am I supposed to do with the rest of my photos and videos?
There are some really stellar moments I captured, if I do say so myself. I make a mental note to use a couple of them in the future with a tbt hashtag or for a slow day when I realize that I haven’t posted anything fun for my friends (**cough cough** for me) to see in a couple of days. But I still have more photos and videos. They just live on my phone, and maybe eventually on my laptop or in the cloud when I transfer them there to make room for more photos and videos. And then they are gone in the ether.
Why isn’t there a platform where it is socially acceptable to post as often as I want and organize my content into categories so I can search for it easily later?
Well, now there is. Welcome Balloon, a next-gen social media platform. We created Balloon to solve a multitude of frustrations that we were feeling. Most importantly, we saw our friends and ourselves moving toward a trend where we were creating and capturing so many moments but not having any place to share them properly. Also, with social media platforms now becoming more of a popularity thing, we saw the anxiety and the decision-making fatigue associated with creating posts for friends and followers to see.
Is this post worthy enough? How many likes am I going to get? How many views would this post get?
Now with Balloon, everything is organized by a topic, which we call a balloon, and you can post as often as you like without being called out for your spam. If people don’t want to see posts from a particular aspect of your life — for example, you hate cats and you don’t want to see my amazing photos of my cute kittens — then you can unfollow that balloon and still follow all of my food-related balloons — because come on, who doesn’t love a good food photo.
So check out Balloon, where we give YOU the freedom to create without the anxiety associated with it. Each balloon feels like a small intimate circle where you can share your experiences and stories with friends.
Balloon Stories is a next-gen social media platform where you can easily collaborate with friends on a new storytelling platform. Exclusively available on the App Store. Download it today!
