Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

In a memo obtained by the New York Times last month, a Facebook executive said the product was "probably like sugar". "Sugar is delicious, and for most of us, there is a special place in life," Andrew Boz Bosworth wrote. "but like everything, it benefits from abstinence."

From the 1960s to today, people have noticed the ubiquity of adding sugar to food, which has led to the rise of many products, such as health food stores and gyms. However, equal attention to social media has only recently surfaced, and the number of social apps for healthy brands is still small.

Of course, some popular apps try to improve mental health, although they usually don't have such brands. (consider using "calm" or "top space" to provide meditation guidance through subscriptions. Or they explicitly seek to improve their mental health, for example, virtual therapists use Talkspace but do not provide traditional social functions. This opens a broad way for entrepreneurs who want to build more traditional social applications and have practical prosocial functions.

Last week, I talked to ChrysBader-Wechsler and Sean Dadashi, co-founders of Just Imagine Company in Los Angeles, who are working to create a "healthy alternative" to the founder's existing social network. Bader- Wechat is something I'm familiar with on the once-popular "anonymous" social network Secret. Through this social network, you can post spicy sketches among your friends, relatives and friends without having to add a name to your post. Like most anonymous apps, Secret ended up being a dump for hateful gossip. But most importantly, it encourages fragile discussions that are rarely seen on large social networks.

Only Imagine's first product (which is still in its early stages of development) is called Ikaria. The founder won't tell me much about the application, but messaging seems to be its core function. One of the main ideas of this application is that the messaging environment should change depending on who you are talking to. For example, if the application knows that you are talking to your mother, it may prompt you to start a more meaningful discussion.

"the future of social networking is customized and relationship-centric," Bader- Wechat told me. We can build more private space, rather than fit the size of all networks. You should be able to share your inner world in a more realistic way. No two relationships are the same, and tools should reflect that.'

The company put its case in a medium-sized position and talked to TechCrunch's Josh Constine. The founders say they are working with psychologists to ensure that their products have a positive impact on health. (at present, studies on the effects of social networks on mental health have spread all over the map; it is generally found that the effect is not as obvious as you might think. You know, every six months, a new study asserts that a certain amount of coffee, chocolate or red wine is actually good for you, and then a year later, another study asserts the opposite.

Other products like Ikaria are already in production, and some are even on the market. Cocoon, founded by a former Facebook product manager, is a private information space for relatives and friends and was launched by Y Combinator last year. I also talk to people who want Facebook to incorporate similar features directly into the company's products. What if the news source prompts you to meditate? (I've been told that the idea has been discussed on Facebook, although these conversations don't seem to have made much progress.)

For Ikaria, the target may be some kind of subscription-based application. The advantage of this is that companies do not have to build a huge data-driven advertising business. The downside is that the company wants you to get your mother to subscribe to the messaging app once a month.

Before we see the product, it is difficult to judge whether the Ikaria or similar product can achieve its goal. It is easy to resist the glut of existing social products and it is difficult to build more nutritious alternatives. Even if you do this, there is no guarantee that it will attract the audience. For all the health products on the market today, we add more sugar to our diet than ever before.

But think about who has dropped out or threatened to quit social media in the past three years. Think of people who turn their phones gray and insist on storing them in a room different from where they sleep. Right now, they are using iMessage and other simple messaging applications. But it's easy to think of new applications built on that foundation.

Maybe these applications will bring a lot of benefits. Or, like most gyms, they generate a lot of income without changing most of the people who use them. But their market seems to be big and growing. I wonder if Icarus will build a whole Foods supermarket for Wal-Mart on Facebook. However, I would be surprised if someone did not do so.

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