Hansa Cequity has launched a new web-based application for Twitter called BioStories (www.biostories.net). Once a Twitter user signs into this application, each time he makes changes to his bio, a tweet goes out to his/her followers to communicate the same.
BioStories creates a profile page that is intended to serve as a repository of users’ current and past Twitter bios.
Explaining BioStories, a note from the agency said it ‘puts every Twitter user's milestone moments front and center, telling the story of their lives, 160 characters at a time’.
On the reasons behind launching the web-app for Twitter, Samit Malkani, strategic creative director - digital experience, Hansa Cequity, said, “Firstly, we thought that the Twitter platform has a gaping hole when it comes to this feature. For a platform that puts so much emphasis on personal identity and personal branding, not showcasing a bio update felt wrong. Facebook and LinkedIn are very good when it comes to this. I think it’d be great if Twitter spotted this and built in the functionality. That’d be great validation of our idea.”
“Secondly, we thought the app would help us understand exactly how much emphasis Twitter users place on their bios. Over time, we’ll collect and crunch data that’ll help us understand this. We’re not looking to monetising options currently; so to be frank, we built it to showcase our own skills. We can either go on and tom-tom that we know so much about building social media tools. Or we can just go out and build them. Monetisation is an outcome of building a good tool. We’ve deliberately kept the site in open beta because we want to constantly iterate as we go along, adding and modifying features as we see fit. At the moment, we’re looking to acquire users through word-of-mouth and engaging with influencers in the tech space,” surmised Malkani.
Credits: Nishad Ramachandran, Samit Malkani, Bhagwan Parab, Anurag Dutta, Lester Pereira and Kirk Pereira