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Matt Hintzke

Student, Coffman Engineers, Inc

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A new kind of social network

Social networking has become one of the most powerful communication tools in the world for the past few years and I have been thinking of how this power could be used in a more meaningful way.
I have come up with an idea for a website and organization that is parallel to ones like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter yet remain in a completely different category all its own.
This website would allow users to use their lifetime goals and interests and create a universal "To-Do" list of their life. Everyone has dreams of doing things. Many of these things could change people's lives in a positive way but never actually work out. The network would allow people with similar goals and interests to communicate and share stories of their lives to help inspire others to do the same.
The website could be used as a way to track your lifes accomplishments and keep you accountable, yet determined to fulfill your previously established goals. The site would be based off Person-to-Person support and would help all ages remain on track toward acheiving their goals. I feel too many well intentioned ideas go unnoticed and are "left to fulfill in the future". Whether its to simply learn a new language, lose a few pounds, or find that special someone or to fulfill ones wildest dreams of traveling the world, helping third world countries, or becoming someone that made a difference in society, this site would connect people in a whole new way, finally breathing life into a once unfulfilled dream.
I myself think that this would be an amazing way to keep positive influence among everyone, everywhere.

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    Ian Gordon

    • +1
    Jul 20 2011: Robin Sharma is another in a long line of 'feel-good' , charismatic types that get rich telling stories of success. I just watched several of his little talks, and found out that to be successful, all I have to do is be extraordinarily good at my job, an amazing communicator, extremely hard working, get up a 5am every day to beat the competition, get super-fit, be 101% enthusiastic..........and it goes on.Well hey, if only I'd known how easy it was! What amazing 'secrets'But he is entertaining, and tells nice little anecdotes and throws in plenty of wise or encouraging quotes, and talks with very small pauses between sentences so you get a little hypnotised; so now he's a guru.I went through one of these courses with Anthony Robbins: Get the Edge book & CD's. The 'hour of power' in the morning, goal setting, self-belief, inner voice/emotions and all that. I did feel better and made some positive changes, so I give credit to their power to inspire, but it's nothing new. The wisdom is as old as the hills, so it is deceitful to market it as something you must buy if you want success. Maybe you can do something where you're applying the info, not just re-packaging it. But it will need good structure, as was mentioned earlier, because a sea of information about how this person got rich and that person got fit soon becomes boring.I don't think you need a new social networking site to achieve your goals. You need self-discipline, and that comes from within. Networks are obviously good for info. sharing and putting groups together though, so you could do something like that. But in my case, most of my goals have changed and continue to evolve, so trying to hold myself to old goals would be couter-productive. Something more practical would be better, like if you want to join a band, you type in 'join a band' and everyone else who wants to join a band pops up - what do you know, you've got a band, maybe. Keep the ideas coming! :)
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      Matt Hintzke

      • +1
      Jul 20 2011: Ian, you pretty much embraced exactly what I would like to do. I do NOT want to be a guru of any kind and give advice for people. I am 20 years old and have next to no life experience so I would not be the best to give people advice. However, I really like the idea of combining a social network with something that can actually do the world better and like you said about the "join a band" idea, I want to make it very user friendly to the point where you can add photos, videos, blogs, ect just like facebook, but at the same time keep an important goal at hand.

      Lets say someone wants to visit Italy. You could use the site to develop a step by step process on how to do so. Pricing, flights, hotels, things to do, who to do it with, other peoples experiences there. To take the entire idea as a whole and help people fulfill that goal. You could set reminders for such things like "Look up flight prices" or even simple things like "Brush your teeth". It could be integrated into Microsoft Outlook so that people can recieve email notifications and alerts using the calender synced up with the website.

      Or, say your goal is to have $1,000,000 in savings by the time you retire at say, age 65. There could be PROFESSIONAL apps that can actually help you acheive that goal. Telling you how much you need to save a year and what kind of investments would be good.

      From my point of view, we have enough technology to create a website that can do pretty much anything. However, there is a difference between having an idea and being able to make it come true. I have little experience in web developing and am currently trying to change that.

      • David L

        • +1
        Jul 21 2011: Matt!
        Just read some of the thread and some of the comments around it! Also checked out that successnation web site.
        I think your idea is really good. The problem i see, every "goal-group" will need atleast one person who take on a lot of work with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Basicly because so many people dream about things... future goals, etc. But are way to lazy to do anything about it. So your biggest problem, that i can think of right now, will not be to make people stop just follow, but to make them take action and start leading.

        There are forums all over the internet which covers most questions people have. But very few of them acually provides any social aspect around theis questions, except typing with an anonymous bunch of people. Basicly just fact trading. However can you get this fact trading to "come to life"? To be the same amount (or a little less) about facts meanwhile people connect with eachother.

        Another question, what happens when the "leading" type, which often take on the most responsiblity, moves on. Maybe goes out on that "around the world travel".

        Keeps poping up questions. How can you get this forum to become less superficial. Most people want to connect with other. Sure they have their mutal goal. And probably will find out that they have even more incommon. That will probably happen to some. But how can you get the mass to join. Which i think is crucial to make this social network last and grow to something more than a wonderful idea.

        Maybe this idea could work if the website is very usefriendly and make it very simple for anyone to create and lead their thread/group. But i think it will be very hard to compete with Facebook and other social networks.
        Maybe you could use this idea as a base thought to build a new one which could be an app for facebook for example. They could need some new ideas on that section!
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          Matt Hintzke

          • +1
          Jul 21 2011: David,
          You have brought up some good points. I have been thinking about how I would keep people interested and not lose sight of their goals, but at the same time keep the website fairly simple. Thats why I would think it would be interesting to bring work and play together by letting it be a serious place where people can express their desires to do things in their life, but also a place to just chat with interesting people, post videos, photos and write small blogs about their experiences.

          I actually thought of a cool little feature that could be implemented; a fully interactive timeline of each persons life that would appear at the top of their profile page. The timeline would show all major events that that user wants the world to see including education, jobs, vacations, and other important moments in his or her life. Visiting users could then hover over and click on parts of the timeline which would link them to a more detailed description of the event.

          Another idea, to implement a StumbleUpon-like feature that allows users to check mark interests and then be allowed to randomly browse the thousands of events other users have done that correlate to that specific interest. Example: Say one person is interested in Guitars and they build an electric guitar out of scratch as a project in their life, they then post this project on the website with pictures and details of what they did. Metatags would then be used to place that "event" under specific tags like DIY and Guitar. Now another member gets on this feature and checks the box saying they are interested in Guitars. Now when they, for lack of a better word, "stumble" through that interest, the first users page about their guitar building experience will pop up and can be viewed.

          I would see this as a great way to not only give people new ideas that others have done, but also motivate them because they can say, "Hey, if he can do it, why can't I".

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