Say it with a meme with new social network from Twitter co-founder

Super is Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s latest social network-style venture that focuses on creating memes based around a number of pre-defined categories (the worst, the craziest, my favorite, I’m thinking, etc.) that you then share to your timeline.

In a nutshell, you choose one of these categories, add some text (anything you like) and then add a picture from Super or one of your own instead. And then people can ‘love’ it or respond with their own meme. We live in a world of memes and animated GIFs so why should a social network based around creating your own not be the next big thing?

What’s on your mind?

While Biz Stone is probably most famous for co-founding Twitter, he has worked on several other projects and set up Jelly Industries in 2012. As CEO of the company, Stone and his team released its first app earlier in 2014. Jelly is a Q&A forum (similar to Yahoo Answers) that had initial success before falling quickly out of the app charts top 100. But Stone has not been put off and has come out with a new app called Super (a name that was inspired by the full version of the word – superlative).

While Super is likely to have some initial success due to the weight that Stone’s name carries as well as pure curiosity, it takes a lot for an app to succeed in an already crowded market.

The description of Super is either enigmatic or cryptic, depending on your point of view. But the bottom line is that it seems to be more aimed at having fun rather than a serious new product that fills a gap in the market or solves an everyday problem.\n

Once you’ve signed up to Super (using your email address and providing your real name and username), you can search for friends via your address book, Twitter or Facebook. But even if your friends aren’t already using Super, you can chose to see posts (or maybe they are called Supers?) from everyone using the app. Super (like Twitter) also allows you to follow people and you can select to only see posts from these ‘friends’.

Once you’ve decided you want to create your meme and in which category, you go through a step-by-step process of deciding the text, then the image and then you can add a location and URL and decide whether to attribute it to your username. There is no option just to share it with certain people and, unlike Twitter, there’s no web version where anyone can check out what you’re shared.

The app works as a kind of stream of consciousness, with people posting their random thoughts in a meme format, which are – lets be honest – mostly nonsense. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it is kinda fun, which is what Super is aiming for. People are pretty friendly as well; it’s all about the ‘love’ at the moment. But – unlike Secret – it doesn’t allow people to post completely anonymously. It calls the option ‘anonymish’ as any post you make will show up in your followers’ timeline so they may be able to work out who it is from.

Super currently has limited features: post a meme, love a post or respond. There doesn’t seem to be a feature to filter by category; you can only search by people or topic and there is no direct messaging option. Although the profile creation options are pretty cool – you can add loads of Supers (that’s what I’m calling them now) to give people a better and more visual idea of your interests and what kind of person you are so they know whether they want to follow you.

Twitter on steroids

Super is loud, bold, very brightly colored and in your face, so while it’s pretty invigorating to start with, it could easily give you a headache. If you’re familiar with Twitter, it’s fairly easy to get in to and it’s a slick app, which is to be expected from a young developer like Jelly Industries. As there aren’t a lot of features at the moment, it’s also really simple to navigate your way around. If you’re looking for more tips and tricks, then Super’s own community account is always there to help.

Focused on fun

I like Super because it’s focused on fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s supposed to be about making people laugh and having access to people’s weird and random thoughts, with the addition of some recommendations and travel pictures (I’ve seen loads of these already).

Currently, as the user base is rather small and not many people have filled out their profiles, it needs more content filters, especially as people start posting in different languages. Overall, Super isn’t a useful app (nor does it aim to be) and, while it does need more people to join and participate to succeed, it has taken me by surprise as offering something new to the market that is both creative and super fun.