According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 34% of users polled say they are spending less time on Facebook than they were 6 months ago. Of the 34 percent spending less time on the social network, their chief reason was that the site was ‘boring,’ ‘not relevant’ or ‘not useful’.

Much of what can be read throughout the average user’s small social circle on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook consist of daily updates on what their friends are up to on a given day. Posts about what a friend had for lunch on a particular day, or a random song lyric from a popular song are not necessarily mentally stimulating or useful, which could be the reason for 34% of users spending less time on social media sites.

Using the concept of karma from the massively popular social news and entertainment site Reddit, MindMingle™ sets out to incentivize users to showcase their best content to the community.

Similarly, MindMingle™ will have a system of voting where users are incentivized to put their best work forward in hopes of gaining recognition from the MindMingle™ community.

Mark Powers, Founder, CEO

With over 20 years of senior/executive level leadership experience as a trend/business thinker, Mark truly understands business from a global perspective. His experience ranges from global web strategies, customer engagement experiences and technological expertise including deep experience with segmentation, targeting, and analytic tools and methodologies. He has conducted several speaking engagements around the world on topics that help demonstrate how the cross-channel marketing strategies and campaigns companies deploy grow their organizations’ top line in terms of more customer demand, more sales, more prospects, more conversions or more market share.

With a background that seamlessly integrates traditional and digital media, he has a fundamental commitment to drive continuous improvement and accountable marketing services that deliver the collective intelligence of visitors across multiple marketing channels while providing a single point of measurement, testing, control, and delivering actionable outputs.

Robert Skinner, EVP, Technology

With over 20 years experience in various technology businesses and a true serial entrepreneur, Skinner brings a great deal of experience to 118id and its clients. Skinner play's an instrumental role as technology increases and as technology becomes more complex.

Lorens Goro, Creative Director

Strategic, multidisciplinary designer and art director with a strong eye for innovation and perfection. He enjoys creative designs that create a unique brand creation to meet your needs. His life is surrounded by art and graphic design, which he loves with passion. With his enthusiasm and wisdom about the world of creative designs, he is confident it will reflect in all of their projects delivered to make a difference in business and the world.

118id is setting out to develop the alternative to social media called MindMingle™.  Users want an online platform or community where people from all walks of life can showcase their creative talents and be a part of something larger than the daily minutiae of status updates on Facebook or senseless tweets on Twitter.

Researchers have long known that five broad categories drive online activity: information seeking, interpersonal communication, self-expression, passing time and entertainment. The concept of MindMingle™ isn't anything new, it exists in silos across the web in different forms like pitchfork.com, indiemoviesonline.com, 500px.com, and wattpad.com. Aspiring photographers, singers, writers, and directors showcase their art on these sites in hopes of getting discovered. Wouldn’t it be great if these aspiring artists had an integrated community online where they could be recognized for their art, interact with other aspiring artists and showcase the talent that is craving to be discovered?

Users can sign up and start posting their works to be looked at, listened to, read, or viewed by the community. From there users will begin to establish their reputation on MindMingle™ as their work is rated and their portfolio speaks for itself. Users that want to keep their anonymity will have that luxury, in that they will have the option to use their real name and picture or a username and an avatar.

Work submitted by users on MindMingle™ can be viewed by anyone who visits MindMingle™, not just members. MindMingle™ will help feed the need for attention for the people who feel that they have a knack for something, whether it be writing, photography, directing, singing, etc. and never had the ability to get much exposure. The community that will grow within MindMingle™ will connect like-minded aspiring artists to each other to provide feedback, connect with each other, and ultimately forge new friendships.

Karma is a system where points are given or taken away from users based on how much the community likes or does not like the content they submit. Although “karma” has no monetary value, it has a social value for users, like those on the social news site Reddit. If a user has more karma, they are generally held in higher esteem within the community. Attaining high levels of karma is something that is important to many Redditors and is an incentive for participation.

We have made a lot of headway into developing and designing this new platform and bringing this to the social media community.  Here's what we have achieved so far:

We have a small team operating in our office currently that is working on this project. We’ve designed the User Interface and Experience for our new product.

We have started to develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) - "The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

Based on initial discussions with local college students, business owners, family members, and friends, the idea around MindMingle™ is well received.

MindMingle™’s vision is to go beyond the traditional social network platforms, by providing an environment that is innovative in connecting, creating, sharing, and receiving within a like-minded creative community.  We will provide tools and programs that create an environment in which we can measure what truly matters.