Along the pursuit of developing a stand-out tech product, there must be powerful use cases born from evidenced demand or ‘need’ in any given market. Through years of answering difficult questions, researching, theorising over the market and studying activity. We found our own form of social content to house. The type of content that actually matters to others, the type of content that does good in the world. All within subject governed, permissioned, short-form media feeds we call ’Shimmies’...
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Although Shimmies will be presented in a very clear and easy to use interface, it has taken a lot of hard work and time at the drawing board to bring all elements together. A lot of contemplation over what factors are most important, what other necessary considerations there are, and how certain milestones can be overcome… In the specific instance of Shimmy, it comes down to building powerful use cases. This can only be done by knowing the problem inside out, and using it to shape an advantageous, refreshing solution.
What do we want to know?
- Where is social media falling short/ What are the big problems?
- What are the biggest signs/ trends for the future through current activity?
- What does our ideal user want to get out of their experience using Shimmy?
- What is the biggest addressable opportunity for our use case?
- How do we engage and incentivise consistently?
- What are the biggest challenges and risks for our audience?
- How can we avoid increasing regulatory pressures?
After throwing all important factors into the mixing pot, it was discovered that we needed our own medium of communication akin to a ‘tweet’, that is managed and governed by each user in terms of structure, permissions, access, invites and content. That has its own specific subject matter i.e Book Club. That withholds high quality, well thought out and substantial short-form media. At its bare bones, this is what Shimmy is, and met with financial functionality, this is our case for an impactful social platform of real purpose and value. In order to reach this level of understanding nonetheless, we had to tackle and address the problem(s):
What is the problem?
- Harmful impacts of legacy social media.
- Lack of substance, meaning and relative value through social output.
- Lack of consideration outside of personal gain and interests.
- Lack of informative, inspiring, transparent content output.
- Passive addiction to scrolling through content.
- Narrow world views, corruption and superficial/ harmful activity.
Understanding the problem not only helps to create a clearer picture of our unhappy audience and what we need to do for them. It presents direct opportunity for innovation and thinking up new, exciting concepts from learnings. It helps to flip a problem on its head, into an advantage. This is what has created some of our innovative features and design solutions.
How does Shimmy solve it?
- Space for channelled, purposeful output.
- Purpose-built space to raise awareness for a worthy message.
- Secure, permissioned feeds for real networks, micro-niches and communities.
- Cultivating new communities through design.
- Financial functionality to incentivise & reward.
- User driven permissions, controls and specifications.
- Direct impact through connecting to third parties.
- Safe, ID Verified UI.
Despite perhaps skimming past the important areas within our project, hopefully this gives you a better perspective on the ‘why’ for Shimmy. Hopefully it will resonate with you to the point you’re behind the project and excited to see the product in use. If that is indeed the case, please sign-up and we’ll be in touch to let you know when there’s more news.
