Note to Our Friends

To my friends, old, new and in between.

Social sites are addictive dopamine vampires. They dumb down the language and the users, commoditizing customers and packaging their data and self-sovereignty for sale to the highest-bidding advertisers. Even worse, they guide narratives through subtle (and not so subtle) censorship at the behest of big advertisers, big tech, and big government.

My fraternity brother from UR and longtime friend, Carl Milsted, and I have created an alternative: a new and unique social network called Conntects - "connect in context." The site has blogs, groups, messaging, and regular profile posts all with proper styling and without character limitations. For both security and privacy reasons, the site is coded from scratch in Go(lang) and Carl created a simplified HTML fascimile we call QTML which we use in lieu of a WYSIWYG editor. Posts without styling (bold, italics, headings, etc.) can be done just like one would on Facebook, though a couple very simple QTML tags are necessary to post links and pictures. Once you get the hang of some very basic QTML functions, and as you start adding more tags to your repertoire as needed, suddenly you realize you are actually coding.

In an effort to minimize the mind-numbing virality of all other social sites, for now we are eschewing a main feed in lieu of a notification dashboard and by default we send out an email notification once-daily alerting all account activity. If there is none, no email is sent. We know you already get far too many prompts and alerts from various apps.

The reason I am contacting you now is twofold. First, for development purposes, we need an "alpha" group to populate the site and offer critiques and suggestions - all feedback is welcome. Second, we have been approached by a few funding firms and the more users we can show, the better our chances of success and the more leverage we will have in negotiations.

Because there is a bit of a learning curve to using the full functionality of Conntects, I am making myself available 24/7 to anyone needing help or wanting to make suggestion for improving the site. Although the site has an impressive "code to the metal" backend (the hard part and Carl's forte,) we realize the front end will need beautification in our next stage of development. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Everyone --------Stephen

sdouglass@conntects.net
910-463-0847

P.S. For a much better, more entertaining, and concise explanation visit Carl's revamped JOIN PAGE

P.S. I'm posting a few links below in case anyone wants to see some of the content before creating an account. Carl has put a "prev" and "next" button at the bottom of profile, blog, and group posts to allow for some limited site navigation. For full functionality and to post, creating a free account is necessary. Edible Landscapes Carl's Dissertation - A Good Illustration of the QTML Equation Function A Profile Post from Mr. Big Brain Steve's Post for Balaji Srinivasan

Tags: alpha group