Redefining Social Spaces to Foster Healthier Conversations

Introduction

Philippe Beaudoin’s enthusiasm for using cutting technology to bring people together is contagious. After working for Google then co-founding Element AI, he asked us to help create Waverly, a social media platform where communities can have the best conversations on the internet.

Waverly’s ask for us was a bit unconventional. Rather than have us tackle the full product or lead the charge on a defined feature set, they asked us to operate as an extension of their own team.

Our objective? Challenge their thinking and provide a fresh perspective.

The vision

Change the paradigm of social networks by giving users visibility into how the algorithms work, and allow them to customize them for their own digital communities so that discussions can be deeper and more empathetic.

Together with Waverly, we set out to rethink what it means to build online communities and collaborate with AI to create healthier conversation.

Giving everyone the keys to their own social network

Reimagined interfaces for creating online groups, moderating them, and authoring posts to inspire more thoughtful posts ready to be read every time you scroll through your feed.

One of the recurring themes we learned from research was how hard it is to energize online communities with relevant content and keep discussions aligned to the guidelines. This led us to two innovations we wanted to test.

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AI recommendations that require human curation

Conversations can stay alive and relevant, while keeping control in the hands of the community’s members. make it easier to design a beautiful deck while still giving people some sense of control.

Live feedback on a post to increase transparency in moderation

Often posts on communities like Reddit can get rejected despite having a lot of thought poured into them. This could be a misunderstanding on the poster, or misinterpretation from the moderator. In Waverly we added live feedback to the

Launching a big idea

It’s still in the early days of Waverly, but we’re so excited to have launched. Now we’re doing the hard work of collecting that initial feedback and reacting to it. The goal is to build a scalable alternative to our current social media networks.