Intersect is an up and coming social network. I’ve been beta testing the site with an invitation from @davidhoang and @moniguzman. Their biggest challenge will be getting people past the learning curve. It’s simple like Tumblr, or technically easy like Posterous. It’s not a blog. It’s not Facebook. It’s not a photosharing site. You don’t “friend” people and you don’t follow people.
Intersect is based on two things:Â Going to the intersection of Time and a Place.
Before I give you a little tour of the site, let me first mention that this is still in beta. The process, bugs, and kinks are still being worked out.
Below is an image of the timeline. Using the [+] and [-] buttons, you can zoom in or out of the timeline, down to 5 minute increments. Stories can be told using very specific timelines or approximations such as a year.
It’s not linear like a blog. It’s based on a timeline that you can zoom in and out. Think of Google Finance where you can view a stock price on various times frames. Your posts can be specific down to the minute, or broad and general like in a year. Each post can contain photos, video, time and date, place, participants, tags, and a text description. It’s more like telling a story. Unlike a blog, Intersect guides you through all the data that makes a good journalistic story.
What’s great about Intersect
- It’s about telling cohesive story and not randomly posting blurbs.
- It connects you closer to other people.
- Stories connect.
- It’s more than blogging and it’s more than other social networks.
What needs to improve
- There is a steep learning curve. It uses new terms and requires many more data fields.
- It requires work. It’s not twitter where you can make short posts during the day. This is a sit down and think about it journal.
- There aren’t many users yet due to the beta state. If this site gets adopted by users, it could be a really useful forum.
Conclusion
I really could see Intersect replacing my blog and other sites. It’s a journal that can be public, private, or both. More importantly, it’s a recollection of stories with meaning and purpose. It’s documenting what’s happening. Unlike a blog, it’s forcing you to really be a journalist, rather than a casual writer. You need to recollect the who’s and where’s and what’s and there are specific fields for capturing such information. The timeline also shows that stories are not linear like a blog. They connect with other stories. They exist in short and long frequencies.
Keep an eye out, sign up for the beta, or wait for the official release. Either way, this is going to be big.