STORY
Imagine a new Facebook or a smart Google which we can use as a “Butler” every time we need.
George Butler is an Internet platform consisting of:
- Web site portal
- App for different platforms (iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, BlackBerry)
- In-app or in-web services to customize each user experience.
In the anglo-saxons countries “George” is a common name to indicate british “butlers” or majordomos which help people somehow.
Following the same idea of help users in the mess of today Internet, we imagined George as a virtual butler which improves the way we will:
- CONTACT people working on topics we’re interested in the exact moment we need them (on-demand jobs, real-time appointments, location-based and topic-based chats or messages).
- ALERT whether we’re close to a useful information or a person
- SEE updated event infos we love most
- BECOME popular workers on a specific field and offer our time and services to others.
- IMPROVE our overall internet surfing activity by reducing time spent finding useful people and informations
- IMPROVE the way we surf informations (text, image, video) by using better tools such as magazines or specific-to-field layouts
- ALLOW companies or individuals from contacting us for promoting a service or a product: no more advertising, no more generic Linkedin/Facebook offerings, only smart push for specific keywords we’re really interested in.
The real issue to become aware nowadays is that 100% of us are surrounded mostly by a lot of people and informations NOT USEFUL for our purposes.
So we make Google searches, read digital too-much-generic magazines, contact people on social networks or chat-based services but, basically… often WE WASTE A LOT OF TIME on Internet finding really USEFUL things or people.
Our social network walls are full of posts or images we will never read because even if it’s true they come from close friends it’s also true we’re not often interested to friend topics.
Our mailboxes are full of spam or promo messages we will never read.
Maybe important messages are hidden in this chaos or they don’t have the right priority in our reading list.
In fact, timing is a very important concept while talking about USEFUL informations/people.
HOW WE WANT to REALIZE THIS IDEA
Basically, George Butler is an app which analyzes our behaviour in real time to show us just useful things.
Login is not just a login, it’s an import process.
No more spam, no more ads, dramatically reducing the total amount of time surfing the Internet.
How can we do that?
Let’s start from social networks and blogs you use everyday but we give you also the opportunity to manually add your hobbies.
Bringing into our platform your posts, images, videos, links, texts you’re passionate to we have a start environment of your passions.
WE’RE NOT IMPORTING ANYTHING FROM THESE SOURCES!!!
We just read infos from these sources, fill your Sonar map and your Profile Tags and that’s it.
Next time you’ll use George, these informations will be retrieved from scratch.
Let’s talk about a real application of George Butler.
For instance, I would need a Florence-to-Milan trains timetable or Milan weather forecasts JUST tomorrow ‘cause tomorrow i’ve got a business trip to Milan.
I mean… JUST tomorrow.
Such informations could be destroyed after my trip because when i then come back home i no longer need them.
How can i know i’ve a scheduled business trip to Milan? From my Facebook wall maybe, more frequently from my iPhone/iPad calendar or from my business mailbox.
This example also applies to people: because i’ll be at Milan tomorrow, it’ll be great to know if my favorite fashion blogger will be available for a shopping-assisted tour somehow during the day.
Also, it would be great to know if there are open photography exhibitions tomorrow in Milan….
Fashion or photography are some of my favorite hobbies.
…BUT JUST TOMORROW!!!
I really do not need a daily mail newsletter talking about photography events in Milan or fashion blogger tours if i know i can’t be physically there.
HOW IMPORTANT ARE KEYWORDS
Inside George Butler one important role is being played by KEYWORDS.
“Fashion blogger” or “Photography events” of the above example can be also called “Keywords”.
Every information or person analyzed by our system is basically a sum of keywords.
For instance, if i like Apple smartphones, i can sum it with “apple” and “i-something” or “apple” and “mac”.
This is equivalent to do a Google search of these keywords.
If 3 of my Facebook friends are fashion bloggers who love Prada or Armani, it’s 100% sure that “shoes” or “bag” are keywords that can be found inside their posts.
Following this approach, we can design your OWN MAGAZINE.
A magazine is a collection of Keywords placed in a fantastic layout you can easily read or interact with.
George Butler will start with just one magazine which will contain only keywords you love more.
Keywords have the function to retrieve entire articles, images, videos or web pages.
In the future, it would be possible to create and share more than one magazine: that is useful when magazines become a collection of specific interests like “apple”+”mac” and “rim”+”blackberry” together in a “Smartphones” magazine or “prada”+”shoes” and “ferragamo”+”bags” in another “Fashion and Luxury” magazine.
Create more than one magazine is also useful when you want to publish more than one Job inside George Butler.
BECOME A FULL PRO
What about become an expert of Keywords we get updated every day?
That would be now possible with George Butler!
Some websites are becoming more and more popular offering micro-jobs like “create a logo for 5$” or “promote your website for 5$”.
Nowadays workflow for this kind of jobs is, again, “off-line”:
someone offer a service some other looks for this …then buys it the other party works on it (maybe his home or company computer) at the end, the final result is sent over the web to the requester George Butler works in a different way.
Once checked out which expert is available NOW specifically for our favorite keywords and which are his/her skills, you have the possibility to:
- see his/her rating/feedback for his/her specific topics/fields (i.e. “fashion blogger” or “guitar player”)
- check his/her previous works (Magazines or other layouts)
- send him/her a REALTIME chat request
- see his/her geo-location and availability to perform a specific job
- buy a service from him/her (specific for job type)
- leave a feedback/rating on how this expert made his/her job
Today scenario works quite well for “off-line” jobs, it doesn’t work for “on-line” requests.
Small jobs are becoming popular everywhere expect in the the place people would really need them (such as in developing countries).
Small jobs could be something like offer our time to someone else because we’re considered “expert” in such field or help someone with a professional service offered in real-time such as a painter or electrician on Christmas or during public holidays.
This is very hard to achieve today within the combination of Google / Social Network / Mobile Apps.
It’s hard to achieve because basically we don’t know if THAT people which we strongly need in THAT particular circumnstance is available or not.
If we have a specific need in real time, we have to Google search or make a post on Facebook/Twitter or Linkedin.
That means a big effort to us: IT IS not in real time.
The same can apply for companies: feedbacks and ratings are very important in a new world which is more connected than in the past and where each company product or service will benefit from comments and reviews from buyers or experts.
A great issue with nowadays technologies is that they are economic centric.
Informations or people come to us mostly ADVERTISED, not for a real interest from our side.
Google brings us informations or people by using an alghorythm which no one of us can control (ADWords for instance).
Social networks allows companies or individuals to create market campaigns based on our profiles, preferences so that informations we find on our surfing are not the ones we’re interested in but most probably the ones advertised.
Social Networks like Facebook or Twitter normal user experience consists of viewing a maximum of 5 seconds per post and usually postst created by the same 5 people..
That said, we would like to improve the way you get benefits from the whole world around you… Please , support our project since the beginning! Thanks again 🙂
A NEW WAY TO BE SOCIAL
Internet has changed our lives forever, more and more we can take notice of the following evidences:
growing number of people which are using it growing number of informations that are available on it growing number of small jobs complementary or not to our main activity A very interesting point of view is that while industrialized countries are more than 90% internet-contributors and/or internet-readers, 75% of developing countries people do not have access even to a pc for personal use.
That means countries like Africa have NO influence on the net: few people available, few informations provided.
Those people have few chances to get real useful informations or to be in contact with “useful” people since USEFUL informations/people ARE FAR from them. Not only geographically.
While speaking about the George Butler project, we refer to “FAR” like a content or a person WE’RE NOT PASSIONATE with.
Living in a country like Africa for i.e. means we cannot easily contact a painter, an electrician or a medic in real time for help, support or “on-line” jobs/requests.
“Technology is great only if it can help others to better living”.
Having this in mind, George Butler goal is to use technology for what it has been invented: help the humans beings.
George Butler will allow childrens, teenagers in developing countries to get in contact with professionals they need in real time or just will improve their lives having localized and useful informations.
George Butler will allow a farmer to localized weather forecasts, splitted for tomatoes or eggplant fields.
George will suggest african teachers which topics are useful for their classes regardless of the official programs.
On the other side, George Butler will allow everyone in developed countries to offer a job to the community or just reduce surfing time by having only access to on-demand and localized informations.
Risks and challenges
This campaign will fund app and web site portal developing and marketing tools to let George be known as much as possible around the globe.
Crowd funding is social based: George is social based.
George Butler base technology and purpose has been imagined the first time on 2012 but the main idea has been improved a lot since 2 years.
We started with the idea that each user around the globe would be happier if having a real time useful place to share informations and jobs with others in a great-looking manner.
Better than Facebook, smarter than Google, more useful than e-mail.
This is why we thought to Magazines, always having in mind an awesome app like “Flipboard” from which we grabbed the innovative idea of digital pages.
Our first crowdfunding target will be to let people create their own Magazines.
You can import keywords from Social Networks or add them manually by using the top right “+ button.
Texts, images, videos will me temporarily imported for your personal usage, then destroyed, then again updated next time you’ll use George Butler app.
Magazines –> Personal Job –> AI (Artificial Intelligence) for Informations/People seeking.
The above is schematically which platform we want to create with George Butler.
Each Magazines should be a background for a hobby that could potentially lead to a new or existing Job.
So, in our roadmap after magazines creation, we intend to create the Professional panel with the possibility to share your skills, experiences, magazines and so on.
In the next developments, we would like to use A.I.D.A.
(Attention|Interest|Desire|Attention)
alghorythm to know which contents or people you manifest some interests.
So, George Butler will NOT ask you keywords anymore. It will understand by itself.
RISKS & CHALLENGES
Developing a new platform is a risk by definition.
Apps or websites can be easily forgotten or not 100% represent customer needs as in the initial idea.
Also, once launched there is a lot of time needed to maintenance an entire new platform as George.
It is not just an app for us: it is OUR LIFE, meaning George represents the perfect mix of our technology and social desires.
That reason is the one which answers to these hurdles.
George is not something to “maintain” for us.
It is something to let grow up because it will help everyone to better living.
George will NOT be sold.
It is NOT a way to make profit.
Then, it will be FREE for everyone, no advertising on it.
Finally, if you don’t have fund to contribute or just you can’t, please word out about this initiative.
The final result depends on you also this way.
‘re we a TEAM now? 🙂
LorenzEstro 