Reimagining a social network for EA community

If one would try to create a custom social network for effective altruism community, what would it look like?

In this article, I will present an example of a concept and will ask, what are the flaws or risks? What could be improved? What is a different way to do it?

I tried to make it a simple, impact and numbers driven network, which could add a lot of value, and could cover most of aspirations EA community members would have.

Summary

The concept is centered around goals and action.

1. Members add goals to their profiles.
2. Then, add activities to their goals (for example, a raw idea of doing something)
3. Artificial intelligence automatically matches people and organizations having similar or opposite goals (for example, “needs and gives”).
4. Then, users select the best matches for their circles around the goal.
5. There, users see each other's activities and collaborate within them.
6. Numbers are added to measure goals, and graphs to gamify.

In more detail

In the profile, members add their goals.

Goals consist of title, picture, description and numbers.

Goal example:

Profile example:

Automatic suggestions of people and organizations

For each goal, artificial intelligence suggests like-minded members based on the similarity of goal descriptions and takes into account all other variables (like the similarity between all other goals and other numbers). Opposite goals to each other, like concept "Needs" and "Gives", gets matched here.

Personal circles around goals

If a person gets good suggestions of similar goals of other members and organizations, he adds them to the goal's circle and follows activities.

Collaboration together

Users create activities for a goal. It can be a raw idea, a task, a conversation.

This example list may be filled with a lot of ideas from the circle. Now I will try to predict with a lot of speculation what that could mean.

One scenario: since people are connected about something they care about, there is a degree of passion. If the goal is very specific, then the activities the circle members post are relevant. The whole tool encourages raw ideas to be presented. Conversations happen here, ideas combine and mix, or bad ones get postponed and forgotten. The result is problems being solved and goals achieved using common brain power.

On the other hand, it is uncertain how this would actually play out. This is what the development team would need to test.

Value for organizations

1. Since organizations create their own profiles with goals, the network would connect them with people and other organizations having the same goals. For example: organizations have similar needs around technology, maybe they could join up and solve it together.
2. Since organizations create activities to achieve their goals, they could crowd-source ideas or tasks. It might become a streamlined way for organizations to attract motivated volunteers. And for people, it would lower the barrier to contribute. By being able to join an organization's work today, they might grow up to eventually become employees.

Simplified project management system

If previously mentioned concepts work in the real world, then activities could be grouped into projects, categories, tags, and statuses to organize all work. This would not add much new complexity, rather simplification.

Integrated measurement

People would add core numbers to their goals to measure everything, which would reflect in graphs to gamify. Which measurement tools would fit here best?

Dashboard

In the dashboard, everything important is in one place.

Next steps?

Channel hashtag #custom-ideas was created in the slack "EA Public Interest Technologists" [3]. And we can talk about it in the comments under this post.

Why to explore and develop new concepts?

In order to innovate. If some of the concepts prove to work in the real world, then they could be merged under existing platforms like eahub.org.

Reference

1. Example icons taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/
2. Example photos taken from https://generated.photos/
3. Link to join slack https://join.slack.com/t/ea-pub-interest-tech/shared_invite/zt-tar2i03b-3xqmTh1lLFn8NWB6X1ZA6Q