Written by Frank Minjarez and Margaret Myers, Product Managers, Parentipity, A Nobody Studios Company
Why This? And Why Now?
We are fascinated with the way the role of social media is changing and morphing from pure entertainment and social connection into more productive, informational, and instructive forms. We love the way social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WeChat, YouTube, and others are now being used to share information, especially howtos, recipes, workouts, or specialized knowledge on specific topics. People can find channels that focus on common hobbies or very specific information such as how to repair rare watches. Because of this, it is becoming relevant to more and more people.
Different types of content are now coming out. The short-form video is really pervasive. People are doing very interesting things, not just dance videos. For example, there are people doing recipes in 30 seconds, and there is software that will turn video content creators into game show participants.
We are especially fascinated with the short form content. Both long form and short form content have their place, but short form is the most easily consumed (as measured by time to view or read), and of the two can be regarded as containing more value per word. Even more traditional long-form content, such as YouTube video, has been updated to add the ability to insert chapters into a video in order to break it into more manageable, easily digestible chunks. YouTube has also recently introduced a format called Shorts as their short format offering.
These exciting trends in social media have inspired us to create a product to help people dear to our hearts, parents.
Parentipity is one of the first companies created in the Nobody family. We are a team of people dedicated to helping parents come together and share their collective wisdom. Some of us are people’s parents, and some of us are pet parents, but each of us brings a different perspective to the product.
In line with the evolving direction of social media, we are focused on creating a new content type designed for people who have information to share but who may need a little help creating the content. We see an opportunity to help parents through social media, just like classic books such as “What to Expect When You Are Expecting”, “The First Five Years”, and Dr. Spock’s books were able to help parents in prior generations.
Before, parents were just listening to a few expert voices, but now there is the opportunity to listen to thousands of voices, to crowdsource the collective wisdom of parents.
We are developing a new type of short-form content with a focus on content for and by parents, though it could also be used in other domains. We are simplifying content creation, thereby increasing the number of people who can become creators and the speed at which content can be created and disseminated through the social media universe.
On the flip side, from the consumers’ point of view, this content will be easier and quicker for content consumers to find, access, and consume.
One of our other goals is to lower the bar for creators getting rewarded for sharing their wisdom. Other platforms require a large subscriber base or millions of views before rewarding their creators. We want to simplify that and provide an easier reward path. Not everyone will get rich, but we are hoping most should at least get a warm cup of coffee for a good post.
We are the product management team for Parentipity. Frank has been a software engineer and engineering manager for many years now. Margaret has also been a software and systems engineer for more years than she cares to count.