It’s a variation of a question I get asked whenever I start to explain Spokt.com. I am a Facebook user and I think it is great for what it is. Most of my family are Facebook users as well but we keep in touch with spokt.com and these are the main reasons why:
1. Conversations
2. Privacy
3. Multi-Personality
Spokt.com is not about getting friends, connecting with old classmates, playing farmtown, Mafia wars, or scrabble. It’s not for marketing yourself as a social media advocate, guru, coach, or any other buzzword job title. It is about having conversations with people you are close to. The conversations happen as a family or as a group.
My family has been using it for years and we love it. I log in and immediately know how many unread posts are waiting for me. Imagine sitting around the living-room with your family talking. The conversation drifts and spawns new conversations. It’s fun. That’s what spokt lets you do without having to be in the same room and without having to be online at the same time.
No other web application gives conversations as much emphasis as Spokt.com. Conversations are valuable. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with more than two people over email? It’s a lot to sift through. We built Spokt for user enjoyment but it has a big practical side to it.
Privacy. This one is important but the most boring to talk about. There may or may not be privacy settings on Facebook that may or may not allow prying eyes to see information about you. I know I’ve tried to lock down my account as tightly as I could but I don’t really have confidence that the information is private. I don’t want to spend my time navigating the privacy options, reading the terms of service, digesting all that is written about Facebook and privacy. I treat the information I share as public just in case they ever decide to make it be public or in case they share it with advertisers or…whoever. Spokt is private. You and your family get to read your posts. There is no other way to use spokt.com. The information is yours not ours, we don’t see it, we don’t share it.
This last “feature” is a little subtle but one of my favorites. I’m calling it multi-personality here but Seinfeld fans might know it as “Independent George” (youtube). Inside spokt I belong to a “Hixon Family” hub. The members of this hub are my parents, siblings, and in-laws. I’m also in my wife’s family hub: “Mills Family.” In the “Mills Family” hub I’m a son-in-law. I act slightly differently in these two hubs. I also have a hub with some of my closest friends. Sometimes I’ll post something to one hub and not the others and sometimes I post to all three. I think we all act a little differently in different company and I think that’s okay. You don’t send all your emails to everyone you know so why does it make sense to have a global “Status update?”
There you have it. Why Facebook, twitter, etc., aren’t enough. Check out our demo video, sign up, and invite your family today. It’s as free as Free Parking.
