Respecting Our User’s Attention
Never underestimate the power of the right focus and a good view.
Since we’ve started spreading the word about Beacon, the feedback has been great. People are excited about a platform that lets them connect to their friends, family, and communities without having to navigate the often turbulent waters of social media.
One of the key differences between Beacon and other platforms is how we regard user attention. We see attention as a human superpower.
Paying attention allows us to interact meaningfully with the world and people around us. With enough attention on a challenging issue, new ways forward emerge that make the impossible become possible.
When it comes to sustaining strong communities, information and resources are hugely important. However, both are useless if we don’t know what to do with them. How can we best match our abilities and offerings with community needs? How can I be an involved and connected piece of the world around me? If we can get a good view of the landscape and pay attention to the world around us, the answers become obvious.
Current social media platforms offer a wide view of the world, but that view is often unfocused or obscured by ads and attention-capturing algorithms. These platforms, in the interest of making vast amounts of money, prioritize holding and directing user attention.
To make matters worse, it is in their interest as often as possible to direct the user’s attention towards ads. On some platforms, the ads and the user posts can be virtually indistinguishable.
The result is a flood of information that may or may not help us make any genuine connections. If human connection is not a priority of platform design, it is easily lost in the mix.
This is where Beacon is different. The Beacon Network is meant to be a tool for people to use, not a method of drawing profits from people’s attention. Our platform succeeds if it gets you spending less time on digital devices and more time engaging meaningfully with your world - whether for restoration, recreation, or world-changing action.
Beacon helps you direct your own attention by giving you access to our explore and filter tools and comprehensive user-curated database - a virtual map of your world. You decide what you see, who you hear from, and how you want to get involved. We just facilitate the connections and provide tools to assist with organization and action.
Because of our commitment to this mission, we are a non-profit organization, which is somewhat unusual for a tech start-up. We have no shareholders expecting returns on investments - we are a small group of volunteers committed to this platform because we feel so strongly that a platform for and by the people needs to exist.
As we speak to developers and finalize design plans, we want to hear from you. What kind of connections do you want us to especially prioritize? What sort of features would be particularly useful for the purposes of organization and action? Get in touch through our Contact page, or reply directly to any of our update emails. We hope to hear from you!
