Social media is a part of modern life.
But the big names in this field are not without their problems. While Twitter can’t seem to find the right way to monetize itself and Facebook wants to know your interests to sell them to the highest bidder, you just want to share your experiences, your journeys.
And when you reach that threshold, that point at which you’re willing to share your journey with your friends and family, but you’re not willing to share it with Facebook, you’ve reached the outer limits of social media. You’ve come to the end of the social media road.
Battling with your weight? Would you share that with the 3,125 followers, many of whom you barely even know, on your Facebook stream? Not for fear of ridicule. What about the day your significant other walked out the door? Not for fear of being labeled as “needy” or overly-dramatic. You spit shine your life, instead, right?
You know it as well as I do. Social media stops being “social” at all, when life gets real. Sure, Facebook is great, until you need the social circle around you – the people who really care – to remove the rose-coloured glasses and see your life for what it is. There’s a line you can’t cross in the current, popular online social networks, real life be damned.
And while recent unfortunate events, like the revelations of sexual misconduct on the part of Bill Cosby, have exposed the capacity for social justice via Twitter, what about the rest of us? What happens when we triumph or fail, and don’t want (or deserve, as does Cosby) to be jeered, derailed, or envied in a public forum? Do we turn to Twitter? Doubtful. In fact, a former university professor of mine recently told me that my own Twitter feed reads as though I’m a bot, even though I’m not. I keep it so sanitary that I don’t even seem like a real person! (Does this sound familiar to you?)
But social media is evolving. And it’s starting in Melbourne, with Incogo, a new social media platform aimed at making social media more “personal.”
Incogo works on the concept of sharing journeys and it allows you to choose to share yours with whomever you’d like, keeping somethings limited to a select group of friend and family, while sharing other things with the world. Compared with other social networks, Incogo keeps privacy in focus, and, as a result, the company bills itself as “the world’s new personal network.”
Recently, Anthill had a chat with Incogo Co-Founder, Daniel Millin, who shared with us the inspiration for Incogo and his forward-thinking vision for the company. Here’s what he had to say.
Todd Spear, Anthill Online: Incogo may be the one and only social network equipped to handle real life. What happens when the going gets rough?
Daniel Millin, Incogo: Incogo is perfect for the good and the bad in life. It’s balanced. It’s not just a focus on the highlights of your life – the snippets of one good moment where you snap a selfie. Incogo is the journey behind the selfie.
I want to see the whole world get behind an ordinary person who is doing something extra ordinary. And let’s remember, we are all doing something extra ordinary in our lives.
That is what makes us unique and special and Incogo is built to celebrate that. Incogo is absolutely the perfect place for the tough journeys in life, and aren’t the tough journeys the ones that transform us and make us into better people? But we can also use Incogo for the fun journeys too!
TS: And that puts the personalization back in social media. Was/is that a consideration for you? Could you expound upon the implications for the real side of things on Incogo?
DM: Absolutely! Although I felt so connected on social media it was “over connectedness” and it made me hungover. My social media interactions were shallow and transitory. Here’s me at the beach. Here I am in Thailand drinking a coconut.
So what! For the five-second endorphin hit I got with my 15 “likes,” I felt empty inside and left yearning for something more. Incogo is a beautiful reflection of me and my life. Who am I? I’ll tell you who I am and who we all are: we are all the journeys we are making and supporting in our life. Incogo is the digital platform that elevates and celebrates our identity and what makes us.
Our tag line is “This Is Me” because it is!
TS: What’s Incogo’s stance on privacy?
DM: I asked my lawyers to take existing social media privacy policies and flip them on their head. I knew in building a platform for my personal private journeys it had to be somewhere I trust. I don’t trust social networks and their privacy policies.
For personal intimate journeys, privacy is paramount. Check out our privacy policy in the platform and read the preamble. It’s very individual focused. We are championing for the sanctity of personal
We make privacy easy to use and all journeys default to private first.
While you’re there check out the community guidelines which are pretty awesome too!
DM: We as human beings are deep and meaningful at our core. Incogo has been custom built to reflect the fact that it’s meaningful and deep relationships with one another that we all crave. In an over connected world, this has dissipated and declined so fast on social networks. Incogo is the platform that heralds a new era of digital connections: let’s make them meaningful. Let’s support one another on a digital platform just like we do real life.
I think the future of our digital lives, and the future of humanity, it a new era where it’s cool to be kind and trendy to move forward in all aspects of your life and Incogo hopes to lead the way in this movement.
Keeping it real
Daniel and the Incogo team are making social media personal and meaningful. In doing so, they are also exposing an underlying flaw in social media up to this point. That flaw, of course, being that the “social” aspect of social media is sometimes questionable. Incogo offers a value proposition that is different. It’s user-centric, and journey-focused, rather than consumption-focused. And that changes the game.
What do you think, Anthillian masses? Do “traditional” social media outlets fall short in some regards, for you? Do you long for something different? Do you think a model like that of Incogo speaks to the shortcomings in other social networks?
We’d love to hear from you in the comment spaces below.
Incogo “We’re All Making Journeys” Video
