Psyberspace

We don’t know much about this app. One thin I know is that the name and subtitel are fantastic. Getting these things right is such an art. The image of a rocket on the site works well with the slogan. if it is a flop it might be that it will be hard to live up to the promise of the name.

I find it inspiring. Trying to name a couple of personal & professional development groups at the moment. Id like to have the skills of this team look at my ideas.

http://lift.do/

Twitter’s founders have taken the decision to fund a new project, to the excitement of many fans of the wildly popular micro-blogging platform. The new project, called Lift, is still very much shrouded in secrecy, but the funding was reported by CNN in a recent article by John D Sutter. News of the app has prompted a flurry of excited coverage all over the internet, even though no one really yet knows much about it other than the name (the app is still in alpha testing at the time of writing).

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, co-founders of Twitter, set up their Obvious Corporation in early 2011 with the laudable aim of developing “systems that help people work together to improve the world.” Lift is the corporation’s first investment, and so industry interest has been at fever pitch.

Hidden in the new website’s code is the slogan “Lift. Achieve anything.” The app is thought to be broadly similar to Twitter in the way that it works, but with more structure, and until a few weeks ago was called Mibbles. Mibbles was been described by readwriteweb.com‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick as “a very simple tracking and encouragement tool”. This description chimes with another, more high flown summary from the app’s backers, who describe Lift as “an interesting new application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement.”

It is fairly clear that Lift will be offering some kind of new spin on social networking, which is something about which Williams and Stone know a great deal, with Twitter recently surpassing professional networking site LinkedIn in monthly traffic. Jon Crosby and Tony Stubblebine are the app’s creators, and they are names in the tech and software development world in their own right.

When the site was called Mibbles, its purpose was clear enough. Users would flock together to join groups based on a goal they hoped to achieve (the readwriteweb article uses the example of ‘I want to keep my dog happy’), and then give themselves awards when they made significant experience towards that goal. These updates of progress towards a goal would then be shared in their friends’ timelines, with the idea that people with a common aim would then cheer each other on and offer encouragement and support.