Thursday, January 12, 2012
Building a community on the backs of giants.
2012 has become the year of the personal project. Along with a list of client projects, I’ve made an all-out effort to nurture a few random ideas that I’ve had rattling around in my head for the past…few years.
One of the projects I’m the most excited about is a new community-based site concept that I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with. Wrestling with the basic questions of “will it work” and “will anyone use it” and the all-too-familiar “will anyone care” has been at the heart of my internal hesitation. I was about to write this particular project off and had almost forgotten about it until I stumbled across a brand identity that I had started sketching. The last revision date on these logo sketches was in 2009. Almost three years this file sat on my computer, half-finished in both concept and reality. I was ready to delete the files (and all other traces of this project) until something struck me. The logo concepts weren’t that bad.
When a spark or even a faint glimmer of creativity hits, you need to grab onto it and carry it as far as you can, regardless of the outcome. After rediscovering this site concept, I poured a fair amount of work back into it and dedicated myself to giving it life.
Without giving too much away, the concept of this project is simple; build a website that will act as a hub for connecting people with similar interests, share information, and discover new places. On the surface, it sounds like a recipe for a social network. The truth is, this will be built and thrive on social. Using tools and networks that have been established and hold a decent user-base is an appealing prospect when you’re looking to make a community-driven site. We don’t need another social network, we just need to fine-tune and focus those that we have. Hopefully, this project will do that.
