Microcosm - 2nd Seedrs crowd-funding round

Tongue in cheek, btw.

"Reinvented" is a little bit ambiguous about whether it is a good thing or not.

What about "Community forums, made brilliant."

You could obviously synonomise brilliant for anything like awesome, incredible, superb, amazing, etc.

I quite like using a strong positive word.

Microcosm - Cheaper than the pub and trousers are optional.

Isn't that polo?

microcosm.app communes people around their interests.

microcosm.app helps people commune around their interests.

(I'm aware that this use of 'to commune' is rare, but I like it. The verb is under-used.)

Microcosm - Making CommunitiesMicrocosm - Innovating Communities.

skydancer, all of yours have the same problem as ours... "I love it, I really believe, but WTF are you actually making?".
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The point is that microcosm should speak for itself. A simple strapline shouldn't answer "wtf are you actually making?" but make you want to have a go and find out.

Very true!

It's for the Seedrs listing... it's to explain instantly what it is.

Even for the Seedrs pitch, I'm not so sure you need to instantly explain exactly what Microcosm is, in order to convince potential investors that it will generate profit...

There should be more explicit reference in the strapline to skydancing as the primary activity carried out on any microcosm.apps.

Nope, not when the most consistent message we got back was "I'm sold, I love, but my only doubt is that I don't really know what you're doing.".

Seriously... if that is the big problem for people wanting to invest, we need to fix it.

The bigger the ambition, the more abstract the communication gets, and we need to cut through that and say "This is what we're doing, and it scales up to fill this huge market". What we're doing is re-creating forums, reinventing online communities... and that's huge.

Now we just need to say that in glanceable and memorable way, so people get it in an instant.

"I'm sold, I love, but my only doubt is that I don't really know what you're doing."

Is that mainly from on here though? We are a bit slow, probably not representative of your standard VC investor

The opposite.

By and large you guys all get it.

"Imagine every forum could be like LFGSS, but easier, and more feature rich, and we host thousands of these things.".

That worked pretty well, you guys all get it, you use forums (obviously), and you know what the value of that is to you and share some of the frustrations with things like events (not being able to see a calendar of what's going on, missing stuff, not getting a reminder, etc) and classifieds (has it sold or not? can I just find frames for sell within this size range?).

You guys get it.

But for people who don't use forums, or don't reflect on the sites they do use and that they are forums... they find it very confusing.

I had a few people ask, "So you're building Ning?" and if you know Ning then you'll know what we're building isn't that.

For the lay investor, for the lay person... they find the pitch infectious and exciting, but really don't know what the product will be.

Hmm, never heard of Ning. I wonder if you could get away with 2 lines - a pure blue-sky strapline such as building communities, online (or like tumblr, for forums), and then a more descriptive one like this wiki para:

Ning is an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks, launched in October 2005.

We are indeed*.

You need to show microcsm in action for the people who are " sold, I love, but my only doubt is that I don't really know what you're doing.".

The sandbox you made worked to illustrate what the potential is by playing with it (testing)
The words in the listing just need to excite

"...The words in the listing just need to excite."

Totally agree. Think Fry...

Shut Up and Take My Money - YouTube

Microcosm - "Sweet, I like that too, wanna hang?"

A site dedicated to auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Microcosm - mint sauce for the Internet

Inspired by your pic

Nope, not when the most consistent message we got back was "I'm sold, I love, but my only doubt is that I don't really know what you're doing.".

Seriously... if that is the big problem for people wanting to invest, we need to fix it.

The bigger the ambition, the more abstract the communication gets, and we need to cut through that and say "This is what we're doing, and it scales up to fill this huge market". What we're doing is re-creating forums, reinventing online communities... and that's huge.

Now we just need to say that in glanceable and memorable way, so people get it in an instant.

Surely that's it right there;

"re-creating forums, reinventing online communities"

A site dedicated to auto-erotic asphyxiation.

OMG, please no.

I wouldn't block such a site, but I hope if people made such a thing that they caveat it with enough warning messages.

I dreamt up an idea yesterday, a marketing thing, but also a way to get to know the sites that use Microcosm and what their needs are.

The fundamental premise is that I want to understand the needs of the customers (site owners) and the users of those sites. And I want to encourage and promote the interests of these sites.

So I figured that I could, for the first 52 sites that reach 100 active users, give their site some promotion, and speak to them and learn their needs, and also discover too more about those interests... by attending a meet-up of each public site that reaches 100 active users. 1 per week, for a year. And each week or so a new blog article to highlight that niche.

I'd go to a meetup, hangout with them, and participate in their interest. If it happens to be cycling, great I'll ride, but if it happens to be fishing then I'll give fishing a try and will learn from the people doing it what it is about fishing that does it for them. I want to learn not just why people are into what they're into, but encourage and support it... and in the process, learn how Microcosm can help them with that.

It's a kind of extreme dogfooding ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food ), but beyond just using the product, I'd also experience the reason why people are using the product and get to know their needs better. Not just the "Does it work?" but "Does it work for this group?".

Now I figured the only veto I'd possibly swing would be obviously illegal stuff, and anyone running some arachnid appreciation group... but given the above example, I think I'd also skip participating in the auto-erotic asphyxiation group too.

Calls 99 friends that wear scarves in the summer.

It was more of a bad joke based on the bad "let's hang" tagline thing. Your idea does sound good though and would be good promotion for microcosm and the sites you visit.