Spontanicity is a project that four people are trying to get going through Kickstarter, an online site used to crowd fund creative projects. The plan (still in the discussion phase) is to create a new online social media site that would have many of the features commonly associated with social media (live chats, email, etc.), as well as some new ones (news streams, better privacy and security, etc.) and donate 90% of profits from advertising to charity.
As of this writing, the spontanicity group has raised only $144.00 on Kickstarter towards its goal of $12,000 to develop the project, but then the project is young; it was conceived only last November.
The four individuals in the spontanicity group are a programmer, a graphic designer, a project manager, and an “errand boy” (their term). While not all of them are currently living here full-time, C-U is pretty much where the project is headquartered.
I spoke recently with the errand boy, Morgan Brandon (he’s also a librarian at the UI), to try and get a better idea about what spontanicity is all about. What I learned is that the spontanicity group basically feels that ― while sites like Facebook and Myspace are great ― they can develop an alternative with more options and more security where the purpose is philanthropy rather than profit.
Brandon explained:
With spontanicity, any kind of group ― a gardening club, a group of women who love purple hats or whatever, could create their own little networks. So when they log on and click the chat bar, or photo stream, or news stream, only the people on that network are going to be on there. And no one could see it except for them. So it would be ideal for a number of situations ― businesses, community groups, research groups, or students. And so forth.
The charity angle
The inspiration for the project came from the observation of the spontanicity group that charity projects sometimes have trouble getting funded on Kickstarter, and their subsequent desire to do something to help. Brandon explained:
Back in November we were sitting around on Kickstarter, and we noticed that people weren’t focusing at all on the humanitarian efforts. And we starting thinking, ‘well people are obsessed with their social media.’ So, we thought of a way to improve it ― taking advantage of Diaspora ― and also thought of linking it to philanthropy.
He continued on the subject, “Charities would have to be registered with us, which would be a very simple process. We’d have to be able to find them in a nonprofit registry more or less. Then 90% of the money would go to them.”
I asked him about giving money to charities with extreme viewpoints ― radicals of any religious group, for instance. He explained that ― while details are still being worked out ― not just any group would qualify as a charity: “As far as extreme religious groups ― really hardcore pro-gun or anything really controversial ― there would be a line drawn there for sure.”
The spontanicity group also plans to have a lottery where charities are randomly picked to receive larger sums of money.
Beyond just giving away advertising revenue to charities, Brandon would like to see spontanicity itself used one day as a fundraising tool by nonprofits: “The idea is that this is not only a very useful networking tool for the average user, but also a moneymaking tool for nonprofits and charities.”
Like Facebook, but different
Since Facebook is the social media site I have the most experience with, I asked Brandon how spontanicity would be like Facebook, and how it would be not like Facebook. He responded:
It’s like Facebook in that it would have some of the same basic utilities. We sort of think of Facebook as the basic starting point. There are a lot of the social media networks springing up and they all offer the same basic things — like your photo stream, profile page, the built in chat ― all these things we’ve come to expect.
As far as differences from Facbook go, the group plans to use Diaspora ― social media software also funded through Kickstarter ― that allows users to use a decentralized system for more security. According to the explanation of Diaspora on Wikipedia, “Diaspora works by letting users set up their own server (or “pod”) to host content; pods can then interact to share status updates, photographs and other social data.”
Brandon put it this way:
The way we’re different from Facebook is Diaspora. It’s kind of a new approach to the Internet ― kind of going back to basics by letting people create their own little internets alongside of the regular Internet. The idea is that they’ve created a community or program that allows you to quickly upload and download code.
The spontanicity group feels that using the decentralized Diaspora system will allow users more security ― although spontanicity would offer a centralized option as well for those who wish to use the more traditional alternative.
Brandon said, “There was the big privacy issue last spring around Facebook ― about it being a centralized hub. We want to offer people the option of decentralized.”
Spontanicity would be cross domain, meaning, in Brandon’s words, “Essentially, you’d be able to communicate with Facebook or with Twitter or MySpace.”
However much the spontanicity group might feel that Facebook can be improved, they’re not planning on eclipsing the social media giant any time soon: “We don’t want to compete with Facebook, because that’s ridiculous. We’re just giving people another option,” Brandon said.
Testing the waters
On the spontanicity website, the group describes “micro-networks” this way: “Think of it as if you are hosting your own web page, but with a built in video conferencing and chat function, for free.”
That sounded cool to me, so I asked Brandon if the group had a prototype of a micro-network interface yet that people could actually see. He responded, “We’re trying to get some of his stuff online; for the time being you kind of have to take our word for it.”
The whole project strikes me as being a little like that, and Brandon didn’t argue the point. He said: “It’s all sort of theoretical at this point. We need to reach our goal on Kickstarter before we can take it to the next level.”
He continued, “The Kickstarter thing is to see if people even want something like this. We could spend a lot of money trying to build it on our own and then have it not work. We’re just trying to get people talking; there’s actually some misinformation going on, which is good.”
With the proper funding through Kickstarter, Brandon feels, “We could probably have something up and running in a couple of months.”
He also mentioned, “We want spontanicity to be the bridge between what’s happening now and what we see happening in the future. All you have to do is log on and become a user and you can take part in the process without dipping into your wallet. Times are tough. It’s complex, and yet pretty basic at the same time.”