Publk happened for the first time over the weekend in Boston at a club with several hundred attendees. The mobile web client worked flawlessly. Unfortunately since there was only one machine running, it was just easier to have the live text feed running on the 30ish screens at the club, but the live image feed is done and working perfectly. It was also unfortunate that I was unable to attend the event due to snow.
The user interacts with these screens by either SMS or through the mobile web client, where he/she can send a comment, image, or even video. All text and images are broadcast live on the screens. Images and video are also saved to Flickr for posterity, creating a sort of user generated Last Night’s Party. Everything is shareable via the client; each text comment, image, and video comes with a button to share on Twitter and Facebook. Resulting Facebook posts come with info about the event and location, while tweets are not surprisingly condensed with a link and very brief location information.
This application works very well at live social events. We will continue to install it upon request. However while the screens are fun, the focus will be the native app (iPhone and Android to start). When the user “checks in,” to borrow from Foursquare, we see the native app as an opportunity not only to open this up to any social event anywhere, but to facilitate hyperlocal journalism.
Publk the app is kind of pre-Twitter. Users who see something or report something can instantly post it to their location, and other users can push it out to their own network with their own hashtags. The problem I see with Twitter is that there are so many networks and ways of tagging or identifying information that the whole thing, at least right now, is not cohesive enough to spread news as quickly as possible. It’s just unmanageable. I’ve been on Twitter since the beginning, and I understand the stuff that comes to me because I started with an established network. I don’t have the time to search hashtags, and while Twitter analytics are fascinating, I don’t have any immediate need for them. Even with Tweetdeck, which is great at giving me relevant content, I rarely exit the bounds of my following list. On the other hand however, if i see something that deserves attention I will certainly pass it along. What I and other people need is necessary information to be spread efficiently, and if Publk is executed properly it could be the one to fill the void.
While I’m developing necessary components to the native app, I’ve been pondering the final application and purpose of Publk. What will probably happen is that we’ll develop several versions of it, try it out in various environments, and just chip away the excess until we have what we need. Almost a year of development went into fine tuning this model, and now that we have it there is still so much more before any kind of release.
If you are interested in the live social events application, please see below. Feel free to load up all the pages try it yourself. If the layout of the pages looks a little off on your screen, it’s because this copy was formatted for 1024×768 screens. The pages aren’t much to look at until you interact with them, so feel free to use the mobile web client to send stuff to the live feeds. Leave feedback right there. Also note that any image you send will be saved to Publk’s flickr page. The index page for this application is publk.com/demo. Please be aware that if you visit the client without an iPhone or Android device, you’ll be redirected to our old homepage (new one coming soon). Below are screenshots and links of each component of the social events app. Also, major thanks this holiday season for dynamic image resizing with CSS. (Please note: our users submitted the messages, not the developers!)
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