What islands do you belong on?
Inspired by Greg Isenberg, himself, I wanted to share my thoughts on Islands.
Like most people, I spend far too much of my days on Twitter. I find people that I’m interested in that are all of working on their own amazing projects but, yet they find time throughout the day to tweet things that make me think, die of laughter, and even things that tug at my emotions. Greg is one of them. I noticed he was working on a project called Islands.
When I went to find out more, I only found cryptic hints from their Twitter and webpage which left my mind to wander.
“Connecting the disconnected.”
“We’re building a product that you and millions of people will use everyday to communicate.”
“People use Islands to learn, to collaborate, to stay in touch, to build rapport and to build movements.”
Interested to know more, I could’ve just tracked down Greg’s email, tweeted at him, or engaged in a conversation. That was all too practical. Instead, I decided to address what I thought the brand meant, but moreover what it means to me. An island is a place where you can vacation and drift off to, or be stuck on with a mass amount of people after a plane crash or something. Either way, when you’re on an island, you need to stick with the group you came with; you have no choice. So, I began to think about the possibilities for community building and different ways they could address it than how it’s been done before.
They mentioned communication, learning, collaboration, staying in touch, building rapport, and building movements. This leads me to believe that when finding a group of people we love to talk to, for whatever reason it may be, we’ll find ourselves on an island. Instead of the usual jumble of threads on Twitter, Slack, GroupMe, or Facebook Groups, Islands will be an alternative to building our own close-knit community around what brings us to the island in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but I can not wait to see what this looks like and how the team executes this.
Only about 8 months late, today I found that Greg took to Medium to explain why he’s started the company. He touched on the issue being addressed and what the Islands Team aims to do about it. With a little more insight, I was even more hooked than before.
He tells it much better than I ever could, so if you have a moment definitely check out his post to see what all the hype is about. However, I do want to share his views on how the internet should be used.
“The internet was supposed to be this place where anyone could be heard and anyone could instantly connect with people you wanted to know, not just the people you went to high school with. Somehow we lost our way.”
I couldn’t agree more. Navigating through apps like LinkedIn and Facebook, they only make suggestions for “people in your network” or “people you may know”. I want to meet the people that I don’t, and I know from my first startup that there are people longing for this. Although, you don’t need research behind this issue to understand the matter at hand. The typical ends to meet new people are lacking or worn out. We need something new, we need Islands.
I begin to think about what islands I belong to? An island with friends. An island with colleagues. An island with a ton of college students that live outside of SF/LA, but are dying to get their start in tech. An island where we talk about family issues during adolescence and moving past them. An island where confused freshmen can share their struggles and questions. The list goes on.
I believe that Islands could potentially be the epitome of using the power of online social collaboration for good. I can’t wait to create my own and speak with some of you for the first time about what might bring us together.
What islands do you belong on? 🌴
Go follow @findyourislands and check out islands.im
Update: So this ended up with me not only meeting Greg, but Jack Dorsey. Unbelievable right?! Find the proof, here.
I hope this provided value to you or maybe inspired you to write about a company that you’re interested in! Throw me a ❤️️, would ya?
Find me at jamesxbase.com or (almost) anywhere @jamesxbase! I’d love to hear about you and the islands you might drift off to.
