We should start sharing the news again.
We thought it would be helpful to provide some insight into how our platform works, and why we believe our features create a better environment for sharing news and information.
“Never in human history has more information been available to more people. But it’s also true that never in history has more bad information been available to more people.” 60 minutes. 03.26.2017
Why aren’t we sharing the news anymore?
There’s obviously myriad reasons why, but here’s what we believe are the main issues we face when it comes to sharing news online.
It’s often irrelevant.
We’ve amassed so many people into our social hubs that anything we now share will only appeal to a fraction of them and that means we’re going to be cautious on what may be irrelevant to the bulk of the people following us.
Are you posting that article on a video game you play with a couple of friends, or that celebrity you love to follow? Nope. Instead you’ll just message the link to a friend that’s now feeling the pressure to reply to it.
And we know that when it comes to politics… don’t even start.
We don’t want to overshare.
And when we do have a topic we love to share news about, we’re constantly aware of oversharing to our friend’s social feeds.
We’re all hyper-aware of riddling our friend’s feeds with posts about our sports team win, or the latest breaking news story. Yes, that issue/event means a lot to us, but no one wants their feed filled with your “important” articles.
Are three articles okay? Too much? When was the last time I posted? It’s all too much to think about, and simply no longer worth the effort.
Uh-oh, now what did you do?
Yup, the big one. Posting an article on an issue/event that’s considered to be a “divisive” topic.
We have all seen that post that ignites that one person, and then sparks an entire comment war over who knows more about the issue. This drags others into the support/defense of the post/comment, and in the end no one even read the article… or worse, the entire point of the article is hijacked to another topic that completely devolves into chaos.
Has anyone on a social network ever changed someone’s mind with their personal comment? Anyone?
Bueller?… Bueller?…
Thought so.
Irrelevant. Oversharing. Divisive.
Is it any wonder why we’ve stopped sharing news and information on the issues, events and topics we care about?
Why should we share the news?
Because we inherently love to do it. When we gain insight on something that interests us… we want to share it.
Sharing news and information is a vital part of any democracy.
Let’s step away from the hot button topics for a moment.
News and information goes way beyond politics.
#Los Angeles. #Stranger Things. #Harry Styles. #iPhones. #Xbox. #Hiking.
And with said — we should share news and information on the “hot button” issues as well. We should want more perspectives. We should be encouraged to break out of our filter bubbles, and even if we don’t agree… we should at least have the opportunity to gain more understanding of the issues.
So how do we move forward?
At Topico we don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we’re trying to at least find the path towards a better informed, and a more civil society.
Why?
Because if you got this far, (like you) — We enjoy sharing knowledge.
Traditional social networks were built to share information about our lives; Our photos, funny memes and personal opinions.
News was wedged into this space as an afterthought, like a square peg into a round hole.
So we flipped the model.
Instead of following people and getting anything and everything that they want you to see… We built an entire platform around topics.
We don’t consider ourselves social media. We’re something new… We think of ourselves as topical media.
And instead of following me… You now follow my curation of articles on a specific topic. Example: #FILM, #ECONOMY, or #LOS ANGELES.
By flipping the model from people to topics we have taken on two problems;
Irrelevance, and oversharing.
Now people can browse/subscribe to our curations on a specific topic of interest. It can be as wide as #TECHNOLOGY, or as narrow as the #MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE.
And, now that the people viewing our curations are obviously interested in that topic we can feel free to share whatever articles we think would interest that topic-centric community.
It’s all about relevance.
On Topico, there’s an infinite amount of Newsrooms that can be created on a topic. Every member can have their own unique curation reflecting their own perspectives. Your curation on #2022 RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE will be unique to every other Newsroom, and that’s intentional.
On Topico, we also consider the headline of an article to be your voice.
Simply by posting it you’re saying “Check this out. I find it interesting”. There’s no need for our added commentary.
Again, it just adds to the noise.
Ok — so what about comments?
Well, we took a different approach on that as well.
Just like posting an article is your voice saying “Check this out. I find it interesting”, we think simply recommending the article is saying something as well, “Agreed. Thank you”.
Wait? no comments???
Yup. No. Comments.
We know people will instinctively think “But, we need comments”, but we feel that the amount of value we get from even the positive comments on an article is limited. “Cool”. “Noice”, and the ever annoying… “THIS!” are just more of the noise when it comes to sharing the news.
Besides, there are plenty of places to share our opinions and we feel that we can have a better environment to share news and information without them.
It also grants us the freedom to share whatever we want without the baggage of all that social anxiety over the event, issue or topic that interests us.
Not to mention all those annoying comments we spend our time deleting to keep our feeds clean. You know the ones I’m talking about;
“Buy more bitcoin here”
“Want to make $5000 a month from home?”
“Follow me for free pics @ ….”
That’s all gone.
So what about all the photos, memes and video rants?
On Topico you can only shared sourced urls. No doctored images, or divisive memes.
NO UGC.
Topico is about sharing news and information, and that means it’s vital to know the source of the post for everyone to evaluate its bias, viewpoint and legitimacy.
In a nutshell…
Okay, so let’s wrap this all up for you.
Topico is a place to curate your own news articles around the events, issues and topics that interest you.
We call these curations, ‘Newsrooms’.
It’s like creating your own personal, news aggregator.
And we’ve removed comments, and replaced that particular form of validation with recommendations, top picks, and influence rings https://topicoapp.com/influence/
Yeah, forgot to mention influence rings.
Also, trend surfing. We really think you’ll like trend surfing. https://topicoapp.com/trendsurfing/
We hope this helps you understand a bit more about Topico, and why we intentionally built the platform around topics.
If you haven’t downloaded the app already – check out the link below.