We reported in detail a few days back when Sean Parker came up with Brigade, his social network for political issues. Headed by Matt Mahan, the former CEO at Causes, a Facebook app with somewhat similar intents, Brigade aspires to marry technology with democracy to empower people to have a better say in the process of lawmaking. The intents are all good, but does the new network have the requisite charm and functionality to pull people into it and keep them engaged on a sustained basis? We got our invite for the network today, and here we have our first impressions of the newest social network with philanthropic intents. We have captured a whole bunch of screenshots and have detailed the features and workings of the app. Here goes.
It all starts with you leaving your email ID on the service’s homepage. If you are lucky, you’ll soon get an invitation to join the network via email. We got ours in a day. The invitation email looks somewhat like this.
You then have to use the activation code to create your login with you email ID (yep, you have to specify the email ID again), your name in full, and a password. The process if pretty simple and intuitive, though we would have liked the login input fields not to be so faded – makes you think as though the fields are not even clickable or tap-able in the first view
Once in, you can expand the menu on the left and click on your name to see certain stats about yourself. The very first tab here, namely ‘Reason’ shows the overall similarity between you and other users, followed by similarity between you and others on different topics, based on the positions you have agreed or disagreed with. But since you haven’t done anything on the app yet, it wouldn’t have any stats. So you need to click on the expandable menu and click on the ‘Actvity’ link, which shows you a whole bunch of trending topics, followed by positions (Brigade’s term for issues or opinions) in isolation in the form of cards.
Brigade- expandable menu
From the main expandable menu, you can invite friends, give feedback, go to your profile’s settings and also access Help and Support if you are stuck somewhere
Below every position card, you get to see the total number of people who have responded on the position along with a comment count.
You can also report and share the position. More importantly, though, you can agree or disagree with a position. Once you have agreed or disagreed with a position, you can see how many people agree or disagree with the position in percentage terms. You may also just click unsure, if you don’t want to have a conclusive opinion. Why not just skip the issues entirely if you don’t have an opinion, you may ask. Well, the unsure link is to let the system know that there is a respondent who cares about the issue, but doesn’t have surety on the subject. It’s different from a scenario where you don’t care about a topic at all, and that’s where you skip the card altogether
We managed to find some issues with the design at the very outset. For e. g. in some of the positions with long text, the comments and number of participants gets partially cut.
You can keep browsing through positions and keep agreeing and disagreeing with positions. You can also comment. Best comments get crowned (yep, there’s a golden crown icon there) with the ‘best reason to agree’ tag.
For those who think they need to bring to fore an issue they need public opinion on, can compose a new position. You can also support your friends on their positions or invite people to Brigade. This particular part of the UI pertaining with post composition isn’t too great though, as once you click on the circle with the + sign denoting ‘create’ the sub-menu items tend to mix up with the background text and icons. In our opinion, it could have looked a bit more clutter-free.
Composing a position requires you to write an opinion that someone can agree or disagree with, along with choosing an issue (a broad category like environment, defence etc). The compose window also allows you to choose whether you agree, disagree or are unsure of the position at the very time you compose it.
Top right corner of the app is reserved for the notification icon on the left which alerts you if you have any ‘requests’ or ‘notifications’ – represented in the form of tabs. On extreme top right, you have an icon representing ‘people’ and has two tabs – supporting and supporters, showing the people you support or the people who support you for a position.
Now once you have agreed or disagreed or are unsure about certain positions, have created a few positions yourselves and have a few friends within the network, you might want to click on your name on the profile again. Here, you will be able to see the overall, and topic-specific similarity of your profile with others. You will also be able to see the positions you created.
Under the Position tab, you get to see the positions you have composed and how many supporters and comments it has managed to garner.
You also get to see the campaigns you have created, though we couldn’t find the place where to start any campaigns for. You also get stats on the impact your positions have made, along with stats for your supporters and the people you support.
The invite system has, for now, constrained the number of users for the app, and as of 23rd June 2015, Google Playstore shows that the app has been downloaded only a few thousand times.
As we mentioned in our initial report, Brigade has been launched in an ultra light, vanilla form with minimal features and functionalities. Still in its beta state, Brigade plans to start its life rather simplistically, adding more features and functionalities with time.
For now, it seems to be a step in the right direction, though we really don’t see the app making much of an impact or engage the user in its current bare-basic form. The app also doesn’t have any provision for adding images, videos or multimedia of any sort, which reduces the visual appeal and the ability to keep the users glued. In any case, the concept requires equipping the user more strongly as regards content, which currently isn’t the case.
Another important question is, how exactly does Brigade define itself as a politically oriented social network, and curb content which doesn’t have anything to do with its intents and purpose? What if I create a position saying “Mickey Mouse is dumber than Donald Duck”? How does the system save itself from content dilution, which is extremely important, knowing its serious tone and the lofty philanthropic goal it strives to achieve?
Whatever the app provides, though, works for most part, except for a few small design related elements like the half visible comments icon below a position.
In the first view, Brigade comes across as a good way to have a rough idea of your position on a variety of socially important topics vis-a-vis the other members of the community. Brigade has some way to go, though, before it can be perceived as a powerful tool to bring about a change. And we’re willing to give its creators all the time they need to get there. We’ll follow this article up in a few months once more features have been added to the app. Stay tuned.