So…this was awkward. Recently we decided to try a little experiment.
We joined a very popular online community. Not as Phresh, no advertising, no “HEY EVERYONE CHECK OUT OUR APP!” crap.
We just started talking to people. About the 90s. Being offline. Social media. Algorithms. Why everyone complains about being online all the time…while continuing to be online all the time ikr?! 😂
And something pretty cool happened. We had a mini-viral moment because people actually talked back.
Within 4 of our posts, one passed 109,000 views, another pulled in 99.k views, with all four posts pulling in thousands of positive reactions, tons of comments, stories, a few disagreements and actual conversations happening. This did not happen over months, weeks, or days, but in a matter of hours.
I believe the total amount of views for all 4 discussions surpassed 217k!
Yeah yeah…we know. We’re the ones building a social app that doesn’t care about vanity metrics and here we are bragging about the numbers. 😂
But for this little experiment, the numbers actually mattered. Not because we were trying to become internet famous, but because it showed us people were paying attention to the conversation.
As the conversations kept going, we started getting into some of the same stuff that made us want to build Phresh.
- Why does everything need to be about engagement?
- Why do we need followers instead of just friends?
- Why does every app want MORE of our time?
- Could social media just…work differently?
I even asked, if someone would develop an app with these mechanics will you use it? And we received a mix bag of responses with people saying: maybe, depends, and “ABSOLUTELY!!”
And then something hilarious happened. The algorithm removed all 4 of our posts. Yep. 😂
After spending days talking about algorithms having too much control over what we see online, an automated filtering system basically went: “Alright, that’s enough outta you.” 😂
We have no idea why the posts were filtered. Automated systems do automated system things. But come on…the timing is pretty damn funny. And again, the part that actually mattered to us, before the algorithm showed us the door is people were talking about the very things we are building into Phresh.
We didn’t buy those conversations. We didn’t boost anything. We weren’t chasing followers and we never even mentioned Phresh. We just talked to people about whether the internet could work a little differently. Turns out, quite a few people think it can. That’s really what Phresh is about.
So yeah…
We went online to talk about algorithms controlling the conversation. People joined the conversation. Then an algorithm removed the conversation. You seriously can’t make this crap up. Anyway, thanks for the laugh, mysterious automated filtering system. No hard feelings. 🤣
In the end, the ultimate coolest thing we learned about our short-lived experiment, and the hundreds of thousands talking about wanting something different in social media is, the internet could definitely use something like Phresh 😉