We all have ideas - our world is and always will be built on them.
Some have been revolutionary: (think: laptops). Some have made our lives easier (think GPS devices). Some make us really happy (think: Oreos). And some we mock - but secretly enjoy (think: the Snuggie)
So how do most of these ideas come to fruition? Some might be carefully crafted after spending hours on end in a conference room. Others may be spontaneous thoughts we come up with during our daily jog. And for just about anyone, the Internet is a common tool we can all use to craft and execute our ideas.
A budding entrepreneur for example can use the Internet to seek advice from online forums on a company slogan. A band can connect with other musicians on music sites to bounce band names off of each other. A daughter can post “Need Mother’s Day gift ideas” on her Twitter feed and wait for responses from her peers. While all of these niche sites are great – what if, for example, the entrepreneur can help the musicians come up with an amazing idea? Or, suppose the musicians can help the daughter with her Mother’s Day gift?
The “Idea Hub” website will be a centralized source for anyone, anywhere to access ideas and advice about anything. Seem vague? That’s the point. The Idea Hub will be for the mother who needs advice on her child’s birthday party, the small business owner who wants to gauge the reaction of a logo or a high school student in India who needs advice on US colleges. Users can log onto the Idea Hub and connect with like-minded individuals for advice and ideas on just about anything they can imagine.
Logistics:
The site will be organized category – and will include a myriad of topics such as:
- Gift ideas
- Party themes (by age)
- Recipes
- Corporate slogans
- Band or business names
- Logos
- Home décor
- Fashion
- Books
If a category is not listed, the user has the option to start a new forum to share new ideas.
Imagine: the Craigs List of idea building and sharing!
Multimedia:
The Idea Hub will of course not be as mundane as a site like Craigs List. Depending on the category a visitor is accessing, a user can share photos and videos with each other.
Some examples:
A user wants recipe ideas for their next tapas party, he can login to the Idea Hub, sort ideas by the ‘recipes’ category, search for tapas and find photos that compliment various threads of advice/input from other users.
A small business owner is trying to design his company logo. He can sort by the ‘corporate branding’ category and load up a preview photo of his proposed logo. From there he can gauge the reactions and tweak/alter the logo based on their feedback. Because the Idea Hub has a broad audience – he can have inputs from anyone – graphic designers, other business owners, kids – and who knows what will transpire from their creativity.
Like it!! I remember this one time I was really running out of ideas for my videos, and I needed to present one soon to my former professor, so I started to surf the web and found a bunch of people who were going through the same situation I was going through, and another bunch of people trowing ideas. I think you shold try to find this stuff that is dome spontaneusly in order to figure out how does it work, which are the "logistics" so you can target this audience effectively
ReplyDeleteI like it! A question: do idea hubs already exist in "segmented" form; that is, are there discussion sites for birthday party ideas and company logos? Even so, a central site for all of it, even an aggregator, is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome! I like the concept of people being able to "test" out their ideas for an audience and then tweak basedo n responses.
ReplyDelete1. How is this different from other sites than other sites that already exist like this such as Yahoo Answers?
ReplyDelete2. This is a good idea, but could soo many categories get too complicated and difficult to manage? With soo many categories there may not be enough discussion within each category and you could potentially have 20,000+ categories. You would need a large staff to monitor this and it would be costly. Also, how will you watch the spam that will come in? Will you approve comments and video before they are posted because from experience you could have people post things that are innapropriate.
3. You have an opportunity to go after a small niche first and to start small. Go after a small group-- you mention cooking so maybe go after chefs and people that want to learn to cook. Focus on one group and then when you have mastered this market continue to build and grow.
Katy. Alan and Erich
ReplyDelete