conversation | kosso's braingarden

Every day, millions of people create content on the web; using their idea to inform, educate, entertain, connect and communicate. Through video, images, text, audio and links (“V.I.T.A.L”), people are using multimedia to form new relationships and networks around the world.

‘Social Media’ and ‘Social Networks’ are rapidly becoming crucial to our “digital lifestyles”, helping us discover new things and make informed choices based on personal recommendations and opinions from our friends and others in our extended global networks.

Companies, clubs, brands and creative artists from all genres are increasingly using social media to grow communities and networks around their offerings, building on the trust and relationships formed by the openness and transparency which it enables.

Phreadz embraces this evolving tidal wave in ‘social-multimedia’; by making it easy for its members to create, publish and share content and opinions from a desktop or mobile device.
Phreadz is a ‘social multimedia forum system’ where content is posted and replied to by community members, creating compelling and engaging ‘conversational threads’ using multimedia which can be shared and re-branded in many places at the click of a button.

Phreadz can provide public or private ‘channels’ dedicated to specific groups, topics, events or brands making it easier to engage the members in any particular area, away from the common ‘forum lobbies’. Each dedicated Phreadz channel can be fully branded and customised to fit the intended audience participating.

There are several ways to start or contribute to a conversation thread.

A post on Phreadz can be:

Video recorded in the browser using a webcam
Video, audio or photos uploaded from a desktop or mobile using an uploader or email.
Video from other video sharing sites like YouTube, Blip.tv, Flickr, Vimeo, Viddler, Qik, Seesmic, 12Seconds, DailyMotion, BBC News, ABC News, Funny or Die, UStream (pre-recorded), TED Talks videos.. and many more.. or any Flash video url.
Photos from desktops and mobiles or shared from Flickr or Second Life.
Audio podcasts, performances or any mp3 url.
PowerPoint and Keynote slideshows from SlideShare.net

A Phreadz post and its replies can be easily shared using:

Blogs : WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr or Drupal (and more to come)
‘Microblogging’ services : Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, etc.
Widgets and players for MySpace, Windows Live Spaces, iGoogle and NetVibes.
Any website allowing HTML embed codes or links.
A blip.tv account (videos)
A Flickr account (photos)
RSS feeds for very post, member and channel.

Phreadz is developing an API (Application Programmers Interface) making it easy for third parties and developers to create their own customised applications and interfaces to view and post content from any site or device which supports RSS, JSON or OPML data.

Phreadz currently has around 500 passionate and active testers trying the closed beta testing phase. Phreadz has obtained its first paying client for a bespoke white-label system at a university in the UK.

To see what a Phreadz ‘channel’ looks like without an account, please visit one of the current ‘public channels’ built around recent (and ongoing) special events:

Phreadz was ‘bootstrapped’ and built in its entirety by myself (Kosso) on a single server and is actively seeking new customers. Phreadz will soon be looking to raise some seed funding from angel investors to provide the rapid growth in network, hardware and human resources it needs to kick start it and open up registrations to all.