Mike Chan is an entrepreneur, consultant, teacher and avid blogger. Last June, Chan and Jeff Thorn founded a new D.C.-area, location-based messaging board platform called ribl. By using the ribl application, a person can share and discover the most relevant content based on their current location. Still in its developmental stage, ribl focuses on local discovery and information, whether users look to find out about crime, events, deals and/or new places. On Friday, Ribl app will launch on Android and it will also be releasing an official iPhone app in a few weeks, which will be accompanied by a marketing effort to push information of the product out first to the D.C. tech community.
That's us! RT @TechBreakfast: The crew from @riblapp demoing at #HoCotech Columbia @TechBreakfast pic.twitter.com/P1i0gQueue
— ribl (@riblapp) March 11, 2015Ribl users are connected by proximity, so that they can can view stories from others who publish a post that is geographically close without having to “friend” or “follow” them. The idea is to post content and consume text, articles, images, and video, about interesting things through an interactive, local, real-time community feed — stories have an initial radius of one mile, but users are given the option to “boost” the most interesting stories past that boundary.
This week, Chan and co. will be taking ribl to SXSW as they hope to secure approximately 2,000 new beta-users. “What excites us is that ribl is perfect for an event like SXSW. First, the density of technophiles is great for ribl to spread quickly. There's also so much going on and so much noise, so the hyper-local aspect of ribl, our boost mechanism and our story sort algorithm will help bring the most popular content to the forefront, which makes it easy for our users to discover where the cool events and parties are,” Chan told DC Inno.
Look who's gonna be hopping around #SXSW in a couple of days! #ribl pic.twitter.com/ioqqFwdR3v
— ribl (@riblapp) March 10, 2015
The bootstrapped startup hopes to replicate the Yelp model of growth; starting with one metro area (D.C.) and then building that community of “riblers" before expanding elsewhere. Chan said,“D.C. certainly has the density of people, places, and happenings for ribl to provide value to its users and succeed. There are many young, tech savvy and socially active people in the metro area, which is our target demographic.”
But just as with any other location-based proximity application, in the end, success or failure may be simply determined by the size and activity of its user base. This is especially the case when it is related to user generated content. While a tech/publication company like Medium may provide an amiable success story, many have certainly failed walking the same line.
Chan has a plan to mitigate some of these inherent issues though. “We have plans to incorporate hashtags into ribl, similar to Twitter, since it's such an accepted behavior now. We'll also implement ways to allow riblers to personalize and filter their content. We've received a lot of feedback from riblers and others about so many ways ribl can be used so content organization and curation is definitely high on our watch list for future improvements,” the ribl co-founder said.
Heading into 2015, ribl will look to further develop its platform and primarily increase its user base. There are even potential plans to incorporate local publication postings/news through the platform, Chan said, though the feature is still in its development.
Ribl hopes to secure a seed round around November or December, by the end of 2015. That being said, its current directive is entirely on user growth and product development. A large aspect of this continued testing will be user generated data. Ribl is in the process of building out its platform to directly curtail the needs of its location-specific audience. Whether content will be organized in a subject-specific manner or otherwise is unknown at this point in time.
