TLDR: Curation is far superior to social media algorithmically generated content suggestions.
Additionally, there aren’t many tools to make it easy for people to curate and share content. Our platform solves both. Currently, consumers want to find reliable information and opinions from people they trust. Creatives are looking for new ways to monetize, earn from their community, and find resources to grow their brand.
The curator economy will blend the lines between creators and consumers to lower the bar for creativity and earning. We’re building a space for creatives to personalize their favorite content while building and earning from their community — we’re calling it diffusion. People will access your exclusive content boards and collaborate with you by subscribing to you, leaving you a tip, or purchasing one-time. Like a cultural diffusion- we want to empower people to use the content they save to share their perspectives, ideas, and culture by creating and collaborating on storyboards that are a snapshot of their digital identity. (check out our explanation of curation). As of right now— we have a google chrome extension and list creator (a web app)
We’re raising our pre-seed round, 150+ signed-up, closed beta of 15 creatives and still building our waitlist. We’re finishing up talks with two VC firms, four angel investors, and one commitment from an angel. Join the journey. (email tony@diffusion.me to chat more)
Learn more in-depth below.👇
Our content — what we browse, search, watch, like, consume is our digital identity. It’s a peek into our brain, inspirations, etc. Tapping into this unleashes collective knowledge. It’s become time to find a new mediator.
We consume more novel content daily, and we have to sort through it all to find relevant information. This is why human curators and curation are in resurgence. A curator’s taste, storytelling skills, and knowledge of their topics and their community need to be empowered to turn meaningful content into knowledge.
My two sense was — “well, anybody can do this, we all have great perspectives deriving from our culture, how can I make this into something people can use to share their knowledge and make money from it?”
Enter Diffusion. A social network for curation
We’re building diffusion to democratize the creator economy by making the middle-class of creatives.
Our goal is to shift the focus of social networks from social capital to quality opinions, provide creatives the resources they need to monetize their authentic community and encourage people to create by lowering entry barriers.
So what does diffusion look like?
Simple — a space to blend the lines between creators and consumers to lower the entry bar to creativity. Connect perspectives with people, increase access to ideas, and amplify quality content.
As of right now — we have a google chrome extension and list creator (a web app). The feature set is simple for the future: extension, storyboard creator, highlighter tool( for texts), collaboration tool, and resource center.
It starts as a toy. We like to think of ourselves as Pinterest meets Substack. Where you can save content from the web, create a visual storyboard with your web content, add your perspective, share, and collaborate with followers. We want to make it easy for people to get started. We’re building the best resource center for creators to learn how to grow and develop their brands. Ranging from how to find your niche, how can I go viral, to how to curate a diffusion board?
You’d be able to use diffusion to discover content that is relevant to your interests. You’ll be able to view creators’ storyboards (up to 5 pieces of content). These storyboards/lists provide you a visual tease, story, and opinion representative of the curator’s content. You’ll find beauty, business, music, lifestyle, and fashion boards. (more to come)
- On the front- they have vlogs, blogs, tweet threads, Instagram posts, a tik-tok video, and a summary of the entire board.
- On the back- you can find their understanding of the subject and prescription to the problem — they’re an expert in the space anyway. This is a great way to peel back the lens of the giants in their area.
Why would I use this?
You care about your information diet — you’re tired of the noise on the internet, and you curate your content already because you want value in what you take in every day.
Creator Use Cases
i. You want to grow your brand, get into creating — you’re unsure about where to get started. You subscribe to a ton of people, but you’re sure that you can do it better. You’re curious and don’t want to put yourself out there.
We think you’d love curating content. We’re currently building out our resource center. This resource center is going to be your one-stop-shop on how to get started. Using our chrome extension — you can begin to save content and add notes.
ii. You’re a creator; you use Substack, Twitter, Youtube, or Podcast. Your niches are wellness/fitness, business, and music. You’re using different platforms to reach your audience, who usually find you via Twitter or podcast, subscribe to your newsletter, and occasionally watch your videos.
Since you already research for the content — you can use our curation tool to import and create a ‘mash-up of all your saved content — you can create a ‘this is why I think about x’s or even use that all to repurpose as a new piece of content on your diffusion board. People want to understand how you got to your conclusion and what makes up your thinking.
iii. You’re an influencer; you use Twitch, Instagram, Pinterest, or Tik-Tok. Your niches are everyday life, beauty, and fashion. You have a small affiliate partnership, you’ve got fans that you interact with, and you’re looking for more ways to monetize and grow your community of followers.
We can help you learn how to cultivate your followers and turn them into a community you can earn from. You can continue to be your follower’s trusted voice by going a level deeper and telling them your experience with the products, how to apply, and where you get your information from.
People will access your exclusive boards and collaborate with you by subscribing to you, leaving you a tip, or purchasing one-time. Diffusion is a great way to deepen your connection with your followers and monetize your insights.
Why would a creator curate on diffusion?
People share more over time. Further, people desire to improve their status by being the person “in the know.” We need to protect our identity and options and be vindicated for having them — this desire is rooted in invalidation from our peer group. The human love of having a niche and in the know. People would pay for this. If they can get a glance — steal some game quickly.
As creators are becoming increasingly capable of earning from their communities of followers, we will see curators capable of monetizing their knowledge and communities. Access to a person you respect, insights to why they think they do, how they got to that conclusion, Paul is correct, that’s an unfair advantage. We trust these people to filter the noise for us and find what we find helpful.
Traction
So that’s what we’re building: we’re around 80% finished with our MVP: the chrome extension and list creator (we’re running into UX design problems, waiting on storyboard). We’ve been able to gather a resource center of around 25+ articles of content for use, chat with 45 creatives, and have a closed beta of 15. We’re focusing on helping creatives monetize and reach their communities.
- Team Diffusion
