A Social Network for the Departed

Think Of (remember) could be a social networking service, serving as a singular profile and communication forum where members would champion the lives of their departed, of individuals who meant and or still mean something if not very much to them and perhaps others. Think Of would be available to the general public from its online platform where members would promote the lives of departed individuals and thus create life links for those who matter to them and often others.

Think Of would represent a life compendium of dearly departed individuals, a global grid of those who are no longer with us, a social network where members would post biographies, photographs, videos (or video links) and or audio clips (or audio links) of their departed loved ones, as well as admired individuals, and thus offer them a tribute.

Members could consider their lives, discover links between them, discuss their importance, read newsfeeds relating to their passions (disciplines), if any, and make contact with other championing members.

Members could also advocate for their sadly missed individuals, create online monuments to their memories, recount stories about them, and thus give them new life. Members could even discover family members whom they had never met or even knew existed. The departed could thus aid to link the still living — those who still remain — by helping create webs of alliances, networks of individuals who share a similar appreciation of particular departed ones.

The website’s tagline, which would also appear in several forms (e.g., colours, fonts, and backgrounds), could be: Think Of is here for you so you can think of them.

A 36-day, $360,000 funding campaign was carried out through Kickstarter, a company that helps various artists and entrepreneurs to find the resources and support that they require to turn their ideas into real projects. The reasoning was that if Facebook and the like are connecting the living, Think Of would strive to link the departed while linking the living.

Five rewards were offered to potential backers, using the number 18, which also represents the numerical value of the word Hai (alive, in Hebrew), as the multiplier of four of these awards. Accordingly, backers could pledge $18 to have photos of two of their chosen departed featured on the website’s Departed page, each linked to a full page about the departed, which would include a biography, up to 18 photos, and a video or link to it and or an audio or link to it, for a period of 30 days.

Backers who pledged $180 would have the photo of their chosen departed featured on the Homepage and linked to a page about the departed, which would also include a biography, up to 18 photos, and a video or link to it and or an audio or link to it, for a period of 30 days.

Backers who pledged $1,800 would have the photo of their chosen departed featured on the Homepage and linked to a page about the departed, which would include a biography, up to 18 photos, and a video or link to it and or an audio or link to it, but for a period of 360 days.

Backers who pledged $12,600 (700 x $18) would receive an invitation to become an advisor in terms of the project’s design and implementation during the first year and perhaps beyond. Any such backer would also receive one of each of the other three rewards. The idea was to have this latter reward total $18,000, but the pledging limit was $13,000, and thus the chosen amount was only representative of the original sought for amount.

The only other reward required a $10 pledge, offering backers the opportunity to have the photo of a chosen departed featured on the Departed page and linked to a full page about the departed, which would include a biography, up to 18 photos, and a video or link to it and or audio or link to it, for a period of 30 days.

Based on the business plan, the Kickstarter project’s page explained that the business of providing free Internet content with the ability to generate revenue from advertising sales and affiliated product sales was a complicated enterprise that had many operating facets. Typically, online media content was immune from general changes in the economy, as it was provided for free. And if people chose to continue to access the website, the business would be consistently able to sell advertising space. As such, much of the market analysis would be geared towards the entry plan of the business and the expansion of its member base.

Advertising Industry

After all, the advertising industry was one of the world’s largest service providers in the global economy. For example, there were over 11,000 firms providing advertising and marketing services to clients in the USA alone. The industry generated over $98 billion of revenue for the USA economy. Moreover, over 120,000 people were employed throughout the industry, with an average annual payroll of $54 billion.

One of the most interesting aspects of the advertising industry was its ability to develop simultaneous traditional and experimental forms of advertising. The advent of the Internet had allowed businesses to communicate effectively with a number of advertising firms that provided specialized advertising activities. Many sites were taking advantage of the concept of providing entertainment content in order to generate revenues. Many major Internet portal sites had reached market valuations nearing $100 billion and revenues reaching into the tens of billions of dollars.

According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2009 annual report on Internet marketing budget statistics, Internet advertising was closing in on TV advertising and would become the largest entertainment and media-advertising segment. In 2009, total Internet advertising revenue was close to $59 billion, with the figure increasing to over $194 billion in 2018, meaning that it closed in on TV advertising revenue as the largest advertising segment. This was a significant advance from 2009 when total TV advertising revenue was only $132 billion. About 80% of this revenue was from keyword search advertising, with the rest of the income being generated from rich media, banners, classifieds, sponsorships, referrals, and email advertisements.

Mobile advertising overtook classifieds by 2014. Global mobile Internet advertising revenue was forecast to leapfrog classified advertising to become the third-largest Internet advertising channel. But after particularly strong years from 2010 onwards driven by the launch of the iPad, annual mobile revenue growth fell back to the levels seen before the iPad’s introduction, and advertisers had to do more than simply migrating large-screen banners to handhelds.

Search retained its dominant position. Global paid search Internet advertising had the largest share of total Internet advertising revenue at over $48 billion in 2013. While its overall share of the market diminished as video and mobile advertising became increasingly important, continued growth saw search pull further ahead of the other categories of Internet advertising in terms of revenue generated, hitting close to $74 billion in 2018.

Within Internet advertising, video saw the sharpest growth. Global video Internet advertising revenue rose at a 23.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) by 2018, ahead of mobile’s 21.5% CAGR. The largest video service, YouTube, spent years perfecting its preroll ad format. TrueView ads were deployed widely, and new consumer devices multiplied distribution.

Advertisers were looking to programmatic and native advertising to improve display ad performance. While search offered spending and targeting efficiencies, advertisers grew frustrated with the worsening performance of online display ads. In response, many moved toward programmatic ad-trading platforms that offered greater planning control, while others adopted native advertising formats, so named because they matched the form and function of the user experience.

Tracking users in a multi-device world presented new challenges. Targeting users of the first generation of Internet devices was relatively straightforward thanks to desktop Web browser cookies. But many new mobile devices lacked cookie tracking, while the use of multiple devices by individual consumers further complicated any targeting. In a more splintered world, efforts were under way to help advertisers improve their targeting of consumers.

With Internet technology having become a saleable commodity, several websites developed within the market, providing services somewhat similar in scope to those that would be offered by Think Of, though none would comprise the main purpose of Think Of. The current market trend among these websites would allow users to upload their own content, such as personal information, music, and proprietary videos. As time progresses, Think Of would continually update its Web portal and integrate new technology to allow users more functionality for their online experience.

A short YouTube video was created, featuring a deserted tropical resort, asking viewers near the end of the video: “Where is everyone? Help me bring them back!”

Since, in all probability, you have never heard of Think Of, you could easily surmise that it didn’t work out. Only a trifling fraction of the required amount was pledged and then cancelled per Kickstarter’s policy, which stipulated that pledges totalling the full requested amount ($360,000) or above would be required to turn them into actual funding. Far from enough people were aware of Think Of, and the great majority of those who knew about it didn’t pledge anything, which could regrettably signify that the departed were not seen as worthy subjects of a social network. Apparently, life was only for the living, with most people typically caring to post their own photos and discuss their own lives.