Launch of Hearsay
“Who we think we are and what others think of us is often very different”
is the motto that fuels the social media startup, Hearsay. Founded in 08/01/2010 and based out of Santa Monica, CA, Hearsay has a team of 6 people, including Ryan MacInnes, CEO and Founder, and Chris Huse, Director of Marketing.
McInnes and his team launched a beta version of Hearsay around mid October 2010 and the official launch was announced on November 12, 2010. At www.thisishearsay.com, you can find the big tagline “the bastard child of Facebook and Wikipedia“. From this tagline, there are 3 important takeaways about Hearsay:
First, this portal is aimed to young people. “They tend to be the ones who start a social networking explosion”, McInnes reported to the Social Media Portal (SMP). The interaction among users is very tongue-in-cheek and reinforces the motto that “who we think we are and what others think of us is often very different”. However, McIness doesn’t rule out that users of all ages can join into the conversation, “Hearsay is easy enough for anyone to use. So I guess our target audience is: everyone. Anyone can gain something from Hearsay”.
Second, Hearsay is for people who are nostalgic of the early days of Wikipedia and Facebook, when things where much more simple. A focus on learning from others about yourself. At Hearsay, the user yields control of their personal profile to their network of friends. The only thing a user has control over is what Hearsay calls “curios”, which are provocative questions users pose about themselves to their network of friends like,
“What’s the most embarrassing thing I have ever done?”, and “What celebrity looks most like me?”.
Third, Hearsay is mashup between Facebook and Wikipedia, but while it resembles Facebook more, it is trying harder to be like Wikipedia. Rather than a finished product, it is still a work in progress and as such, it still has a long way to go. McInnes told to SMP: “It takes a whole lot of breaking new ground to figure out how exactly to make this work, and the mechanics of doing so”.
Find Ryan McInnes profile on Hearsay at http://thisishearsay.com/goddamnyouryan.
Interesting launch. The link to the site in the second paragraph is broken.
Thanks for sharing Amy.
I signed up, is kind of a fun take on social networking. Lets see how it turns out.
The one thing that does bother me a little is the huge Adsense on the pages. I feel is kind of a turn off for me. Way to much in my face to even consider to click on them.
Cheers Falko
The link is fixed, David. Thanks for the heads-up!
@Falco, totally! I felt the same way!
@ Falko Agreed, the big AdSense is just too big. I wished they had waited to get a bit more traffic before implementing it.