What happens after you successfully source funding for a startup then realize that the venture that you are working on isn’t going to succeed? Twitter co-founder Biz Stone faced that dilemma after he launched a crowd sourced search engine. The choice was either to continue investing money into a venture with a small but loyal following or use the funding to start something new. Stone decided that the best thing to do was launch an entirely new app based on the premise of fun called Super.
Super is an app where you can design your own pictures or memes and share them with your friends. The goal of the app is to transfer emotions so that you can make people feel better. The app is full of bright colors and in order to post anything, you are promoted with a few openers such as “The best”, “I love” and “Once upon a time” and you finish your post. Then you pick from preselected art or imagery and create a fun image to complete your post. Once you are satisfied, you choose which social media outlet to share it on: Twitter, Tumbler, or Instagram. The app itself it full of bright, vibrant colors and interesting images. It was definitely a fun experience and relatively easy to get started. The closest comparison to another app is that it’s similar to Instagram but instead of making pictures beautiful, you make your story fun. Also the app leverages other social media audiences so you can either tap into your existing network of friends to share your piece or you can follow new people on Super. This is a smart move to ensure that the app isn’t based on building its own followers in order to be successful.
Take a look at the example below to show how Super can make a basic statement exciting.
Into this!
Transform this…
Questions for the class:
Do you think that fun and happy posts can alter someone’s mood?
Will an app like this resonate with millennials and have staying power in the market?
Article:
http://mashable.com/2015/03/13/biz-stone-on-jelly-and-super/
social media - gba class blog 
I do not believe that an app has the ability to alter someone’s mood. For example, if someone were to experience a personal loss or tragedy, I think that it is highly unlikely that an interesting picture, with text can change that individuals emotions of grief. I think that it would be a stretch to say that an app like this would have any impact on an individual who was in the midst of feeling grief. Additionally, if an individual is in an ecstatic state, I don’t believe that this app has the ability to bring their emotion to yet a higher level.
I do not think that this app will have staying power in the market. Although it might catch the attention of millennials, briefly, I believe that it will be a flash in the pan. I don’t believe that this app adds any social value to the community and therefore, cannot survive.
I personally think this is a app that will soon be a distant memory. I honestly do not think that moods will be altered by this app and I cannot say that there is a promising future in store. A picture created by someone and then posted to social media simply does not have enough to alter a person’s mood. There is not emotion tied to or even really conveyed by the simplistic designs/memes created and shared via this app.
Unfortunately, this venture will most likely fail, but perhaps the millennials will enjoy it for a period of time, but there is no staying power here. We will see the masses move on quite rapidly and this will be an afterthought.
I think this is a great idea for Twitter. The power of social media is visual and any way social media platforms can make posts more visual will be a great thing.