A team of professional designers, developers, and testers at New Media Guru are currently working on a next-generation social media website aimed at an educational audience. Expected to launch in September, the site will be composed of “talkwits,” which are sparks of information 350 characters or less. The said talkwits are similar to “tweets” or “posts” but are held to higher standards of quality. The company’s goal, in essence, is to create a “premium social media site,” with purposeful content that will be helpful to writers, students, and researchers.

CEO Sean Misra says the site will offer “fresh educational content, as sites like Mental Floss and How Stuff Works do” but present it in “the fast-paced, live format of social media.” Perhaps the most interesting aspect of TalkWits is its search engine, which Misra describes as ‘emotionally intelligent.’ Users will be able to refine their search with a host of filters that, in some ways, challenge the capabilities of Google. For example, a user can filter talkwits by sentiment to search for opinions with positive, negative, amused, or angry tones. The content tagging will be executed by back-end content managers as well as Big Data text semantics.  

The tagline of the site is The Future of Conversation. “It’s a next-generation library powered by artificial intelligence,” Misra says. “It’s a power plant of creative research.” Users will be able to search for “talkwits” in 100s of categories and 1000s of subcategories. After, the site will allow researchers to:

-    Differentiate between facts vs. opinions,
-    Search semantically — see what makes people happy, angry, or amused about a subject
-    Search by demographics: see what people under 13 are saying about a subject or people over 65, or people in Asia or Europe, males vs. females, etc.
-    Differentiate between public opinions vs. professional opinions
-    Organize talkwits into folders for specific projects — the site will generate a bibliography for you in MLA or APA format

To monitor quality, before a talkwit goes live on the site, it is submitted to a “jury” (a team of content managers) to ensure it meets standards of 1) Quality, 2) Appropriateness, and 3) Originality.

Users will get rewarded for writing high-quality content that passes the jury’s approval. Based on the quality and quantity of one’s posts, users will accumulate points that can be swapped for prizes such as TalkWits.com gear, Amazon.com gift certificates, iPhones, and PayPal rewards. The website intends to create a social media economy. “Social media will become a part-time job for the most prolific posters. Users, who consistently produce high-quality content, will not just be contributors of the site, they will be employees,” Misra says.

The company is currently raising funds to help turn their vision into a reality. A crowd-funding campaign has been launched on Indiegogo, with the goal to raise $20,000 over the next several weeks.  TalkWits.com gear (t-shirts, baseball caps, iPhone cases, stuffed parrots, etc.) are being given away as perks to investors. To pledge, please visit: igg.me/at/TalkWits

About Team:
TalkWits is currently being created by a team of 15 professional designers, developers, and testers at New Media Guru (http://newmediaguru.co.uk), who have worked with clients such as Intuit, Bacardi, and Nikon. The project manager and website creator is Sean Misra, who earned his MBA at Northeastern University and has experience working in FCAT (Fidelity Investments technology department).  

TalkWits

Email: [email protected]
Website: http://talkwits.com

Media Contact
Company Name: TalkWits
City: Boston
State: Massachusetts
Country: United States
Website: http://igg.me/at/TalkWits