Tired Of The Noise Of Facebook And Twitter? Escape To Raftr, To Talk And Discuss

I know a lot of people who are bored of Facebook (and Twitter), but are forced to keep visiting it as they’ve become their major source of News and Current Affairs.

The problem is, this stuff which serves for their intellectual hunger is buried deep within a mass of unending and irrelevant posts about cats, cakes, local business promotions and what not. As a result, users end up signing up for a raft of different apps and services to read intellectually stimulating stuff, or even regular everyday stuff like sports and TV shows.

The problem most of users now face, is that there are many, many sources of news, but not enough places where discussions can fester. Where opinions and thoughts about news and affairs of import can be shared and ‘cast.

Enter Raftr.

Created by Yahoo’s former President, Sue Decker, Raftr is a new startup that might become your retreat from all the noise on current social media platforms. It encourages the user to follow topics of her interest — like sports, news, and TV, rather than people.

In fact, Raftr is intended to discourage abuse and self-promotional noise. One way in which Raftr accomplishes this is by tying user accounts to phone numbers and not email addresses, which in turn makes it difficult for the user to register multiple times as is possible with other platforms these days.

Decker and one of Raftr’s investors, Michael Dearing (founder of Harrison Metal, a venture capital firm) explain:
“Using Raftr is like going to a really great dinner party where there’s little rooms talking about different topics and you can move from room to room, but you know that if you go into the ‘White House discussion room,’ there’s going to be some people who take this seriously and want to hear from others,” Decker said. “It’s not a shouting fest, it’s not megaphones. It’s a conversation.”

Users have the freedom to choose the topics that they want to follow and see what people are posting about them in a typical feed manner or on the topic page.

Where did this all start from?

Well, from Decker’s own disappointment with Yahoo — for the reason that it (Yahoo) failed to tap into its main asset, News and Current Affairs.
It failed to transmute its media content into something that people could consume easily on their smartphones and share it with their friends.

Decker wants to move in to the gap. She’s created a space where superfans can discuss about anything they like from their favourite TV shows like “Stranger Things” to any recent political issue, without any unnecessary clutter.

The way we see it, Raftr will occupy a middle ground between a fan forum and checking a hashtag on Twitter.

Speaking of other social networks, Decker said, “They typically start more general and then more specific ones crop up, to address a specific interest…Once the more general ones get so broad, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for”.

There’s more to Raftr though.

Other than posts made by users, Raftr offers something else as well — it’s own editorial staff that will deliver one blog post a week on each topic.
The entire team is driven by Decker’s view that content should be used to amp up the conversation, not by a means to an end.

To that end, Raftr’s been created to allow users to talk about an event in private, with an individual or custom groups using chat-room type functionality, if they so prefer.
This way, users can also end up finding new like-minded friends.

Raftr as of now, seems to have mapped out its source of revenue — which is a slight departure from conventional methods. Others rely on ads or VC money, but Raftr (at least in the initial stages) plans to make money via the editorial content that Raftr’s team produces, rahter than by dropping ads onto your feed.

The question here is will Raftr be able to make a difference or make its presence felt in the social media market?

Maybe.

Thing is, this is no rocket science, so it’s nothing very unique either — if you’re already deeply engaged in a fan community, or subreddit, then Raftr isn’t likely to make a huge change in your activity pattern.

But if you are a diehard who wants to go somewhere to talk about the shows you love or news you’re concerned about, Raftr does at least at first glance, feel easier to navigate that stepping into the firehose of Twitter or Facebook!

Having been on Raftr for a while now, I can tell you — it’s a nice place to hang out and talk — it’s a lot like friends sitting around the (virtual) table at home or in a quiet coffee shop and chatting up. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to yell over the din of a pub (which is what Facebook’s kind of become these days).

But Raftr’s not there yet, entirely. A lot more content needs to start flowing to really get me interested and coming back several times a day — but that’s a factor of the number of users on the platform (which should be growing significantly over the coming months), and I need to contribute too. As a platform and an app, Raftr needs to land in the zone between the intricacies of Reddit and Tumblr, and the effortlessness of Facebook.

That said, I believe Raftr’s going to gain steam really soon. You should go check it out and start expressing yourself. User Generated Content 101!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.