What is Bright

We asked all of our team members what Bright was. Here's what they had to say:

• Jay: A social network that’s based on being and sharing the best of the internet.  Watching people forge new and interesting connections with each other.

• Margot:  Bright to me is a light spot in a dark place.  

• Mina: Bright is somewhere communities of interested people can share their content without being harassed.

• Steve: Bright is a safe place for honest discussion and discourse where original thought can have a place. 

• Taryn: A community of people built on trust.  Connecting people in a better and more meaningful way.

• Trevor: Bright is a social media community that will provide a social experience without the negative mental health impacts of other social media.

When we first started talking about Bright as a team, back when it was still known as "The Connection Project", the idea was simple:  Identify the source of problems on existing social media platforms.  This exercise was purely theoretical.  The goal was not to solve these well-documented problems but only to try to figure out what caused them.  To our surprise, identifying the main source was relatively easy.  The lack of trust in existing social media platforms is staggering.  People don't trust the networks themselves, the other people on the network (or even that they are in fact people), or the information that's provided on the network.  Because we were still thinking about all of this theoretically it gave us the freedom to think about how to build trust without any traditional restraints.  We genuinely asked ourselves and each other:  Is there a better way to do this, or is the lack of trust online inevitable?  We were a lot of fun at (virtual) dinner parties last year.  

The lack of trust in existing social media platforms is staggering.  People don't trust the networks themselves, the other people on the network (or even that they are in fact people), or the information that's provided on the network.

Every person, group, and business has to choose their priorities.  We are fortunate to have the benefit of learning from the early social media platforms when we make those choices.  Early on we identified two important points of departure.  First, to establish meaningful trust, social media networks need to treat people like people and not as commodities.  We will not differentiate between those people who are team members, employees, partners, members, or complete strangers – at Bright, they will be treated with equal respect.  As such, we don't sell (or trade) data, ever.  We are a company that offers curated content and facilitated connection through community to people, not people to marketing agencies.  Second, accountability is key.  Every person on our team, every employee, every partner, and every member is authenticated so you never have to worry about dealing with a bot.  Furthermore, as each account is tied to someone's real identity, there's virtually no opportunity to hide behind a screen as every interaction and action is tied to a real person.  We realized quickly that these two changes opened up a world of possibility for what we could create, and we've been working to build it every day since.

We will not differentiate between those people who are team members, employees, partners, members, or complete strangers – at Bright, they will be treated with equal respect. 

As a first step, we built a simple landing page website.  This allowed us to set out a few key principles and to invite interested parties to register for updates.  It also helped us to think through our initial design preferences and questions.  At the same time, we've been working on our next steps.  Our weekly newsletter, which should be ready for delivery this May (2021), and our app, which will launch in beta later this summer.  The weekly newsletter will be a sort of preview of what the app will look like, bringing you the best of the internet.  This process will help us to identify what our members want to see more of, who they want to hear from, and how they want to interact with each other (and us!).  The app will take a bit longer to design and build, but that process is well underway and we could not be more excited about it!  Our newsletter will include regular updates, directly from our designers and developers.   

 Contact Details:

We'd love to hear from you!

If you'd like to learn more about our community generally, check out TheBrightApp.com and register your interest for updates if you would like to receive the newsletter.

If you're interested in contributing to the newsletter please contact partners@thebrightapp.com

If you would like to register to join the beta please contact beta@thebrightapp.com