IN-IT.COM
Video Crowdsourcing tool for collective action
THE CHALLENGE:
Empowering individuals and communities to speak up and effectively get their voices heard so that they can have a say in shaping the narratives and decisions that affect their lives.
THE PRODUCT:
in-it.com is a video crowdsourcing tool that enables individuals and organizations to create Story-fueled impact campaigns where people can collectively speak up and share their stories in a secure way.
THE OUTCOME:
We had successful campaigns on in-it (example: #StopTheBan) and our videos were used by the media, members of congress, presidential candidates and NGOs/non-profits and they helped pass two bills.
Problem 1:
Getting our voices heard is difficult
Background: A personal story
Creating in-it was derived from my personal experience of living in an authoritarian country where it was too risky to get my voice heard. My understanding was that social media can resolve the issue, however when I moved to the US and faced the Travel Ban I realized how hard it is to get my voice heard, even in a free country.
Challenges of getting our voices heard
The thing is, although we are flooded with options for sharing our stories, experiences and opinions, It’s really hard to get our voices heard. In fact social media is designed to elevate and amplify those who have a large follower base and going viral without having a large number of followers is quite rare. That’s why people have to tag famous people or DM them in case they repost their posts and others would see it. It becomes even harder to be heard when an individual wants to talk about a topic that is not trending at the moment, or when the topic is sensitive. No wonder most people feel voiceless and unheard.
To summarize, here are the issues we face when trying to build momentum around an issue or topic on social media are:
1. Limited Reach
Stories that deserve to be heard usually get lost in the clutter of social media.
2. Easy to ignore and hard to find
Stories are scattered on different platforms, with various hashtags, or stricter privacy settings; as a result, they lose their collective power and can be easily ignored. This also makes them hard to share and find.
3. Privacy and security
Many people are silent out of fear, shame, or because they want to protect their online persona.
Did you know Tarana Burke started her efforts for #MeToo campaign in 2006? That’s right, it took 11 years for the campaign to get momentum as she wasn’t rich, famous, powerful or lucky for her posts to go viral and get heard. Also, the issue was sensitive, so people were uncomfortable to speak up on social media. // Photo by Vice
Problem 2:
Finding useful content is time-consuming
On the other hand all those who want to or need to hear from their audience or fans have a hard time finding what they need on social media. Therefore, they need to create web pages or forms (view examples in the image below), that are mostly text-based and long, for people to share their stories and'/or content with them. Creating these web pages/forms, then getting the content in a server, and finally posting them somewhere else to show them is an extra and time-consuming workflow that someone or a team would need to take care of (depending on how many videos they receive). Finally, guaranteeing security and privacy for sensitive issues is another complicated step that needs resources and can be risky. According to Congressional Management Foundation :
“79% of congressional staffers believe a personal story related to a bill or issue from a constituent would be helpful. However, only 18% of them get access to such stories.”
Opportunity
We decided to make it easier to create a collective voice and get the attention of individuals or organizations with a large follower base who want to hear those stories in a safe and effective way.
How it works
When you have a topic that needs people stories and experiences, you can create a “Mission” for it on in-it. A Mission is simply an open call for videos submission. These missions can be started by or targeted at an influential organization or individual. They can have various types of incentives like monetary and non-monetary rewards, goals, polls and etc. So, instead of posting content as just one voice and trying so hard to get the attention of someone, people can actually contribute their videos to a mission, along with others, which will give them an equal opportunity to be heard and a collective power that can definitely get public attention and build momentum.
Mission page
A Mission can be created for various use cases -from activism to challenges, events and storytelling projects. Our focus was to start with Activism and more sensitive topics due to the unmet needs of people and imminent risk both people and the activists have to take when it come to speaking up to power and bringing visibility to issues that no one dares to talk about.
The Mission page is designed to house all stories about the same issue in one place, making them easy to share and hard to ignore. Apart from “The story” and “Share videos of” sections, the rest of the information are optional and are there to give video contributors motivation.
MISSION CREATION
User-friendly and simple:
From early on we realized that creating a mission is a daunting task. Therefore we decided to understand how open calls are currently created.
- We audited various platforms that are for creating petitions, crowdfunding, and campaigns.
- We looked at the ways that content seekers ask for content in their story submission forms.
- We interviewed a diverse range of users, including journalists, advocates, social media managers, content creators, students and a few people who have previously ran campaigns.
After all our research, we created a 5-step process that according to anyone who has used it, it is extremely user-friendly and simple to use (create a test Mission here). The following screens show how you can create a Mission on in-it.
Flexible and scalable:
When you create a Mission you get various features in different steps of the process that would allow you to use your Mission for different use cases. Here are some examples:
- Storytelling projects, journalism,
- Challenges, events, or competitions: These usually will use our “deadline” and “Reward” feature.
- Movements, campaigns and activism: For this type of topics, “Goal” feature is very useful.
- Other audience engagement use cases: The features in Mission creation process were designed to make sure that we could observe how the product is being used (which features are used more and which ones aren’t) and also as the product grows it would be able to serve the needs and use cases that we might have not initially marketed the product for (and organic growth based on people’s preference) or anticipated.
Interested to see the design process of in-it?
Value Propositions
For people (Those who contribute to Missions):
- Easily share their voices with those who want or need to see their stories (1 link with all the videos) and bring visibility and accountability.
- Being able to see each other’s stories, learn from one another and have a sense of solidarity and togetherness.
- Being part of shaping the narratives and decisions that are usually made for them.
For content seekers :
- Having access to a content directory organized by topic and searchable by tags, locations, etc.
- Easily license content.
- Finding stories that are not told anywhere else (anonymous upload feature).
For Mission creators:
1. Organize and get organized in no time
By using in-it, instead of getting people's content in your email, direct message, or in a shared folder and then edit and upload it, you can start a Mission page about a certain topic and invite everyone to directly upload their videos to it. We also enables you to sort through the content using filters and tags, leave comments, and share or download your favorite videos.
2. Offer a safe space for untold stories
If you plan to collect videos about a sensitive topic, you can enable anonymous upload for your Mission. We protect our users’ privacy by providing tools to automatically pixelate their videos and keep their personal info confidential.
3. Own the collected content
We take user’s consent seriously. That’s why when the users upload their video, we ask if their content can be used to promote the Mission and it’s message. As a Mission creator, you can download and use any content from your Mission that has its creator’s consent.
4. Make your Mission appear anywhere you want
Missions can be embedded on any website that the Mission creators want by using an iFrame code which we will provide you with View example . This will help give Missions more exposure.
Achievements and collaborations
We had successful campaigns on in-it and our videos were used by the media, members of congress, presidential candidates and NGOs/non-profits (Ex. MoveOn, CNN, Family Forward, Zealo.us, Witness) they helped pass two bills.
Example: #StopTheBan campaign
Long-term vision
With we planned on building the future of online movements. The following is how we envisioned our homepage, Mission creator’s dashboard, and curated content page would be.
Final note
A few months ago I had to make the hard decision of pulling the plug and not continue developing in-it any further due to financial challenges. However, the site is still live and can be used.
I would like to end this project with a quote that really inspires me and helped me accept that things sometimes don’t work the way we want but we need to commit to our mission and keep going.
“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience. It takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way.”
- Barack Obama
