What is Momentage?
By
Tarrah Austria with
George Castineiras
Tarrah Austria: Tell me about momentage.
George Castineiras: We love social media. It supports every aspect of Momentage, our photo-sharing and storytelling app. Where do we fit in the social scheme of things? We see our app as an antidote to the one-dimensional superficiality of vast swathes of the social media landscape.
Instant gratification is okay. It’s a natural corollary of social media. However, we think the world is ready for a little more nuance, more artistry in how we portray our lives and the ability to extend beyond seconds and characters in telling our story.
Tarrah: Does social have to mean shallow?
George: No.
Sharing what we love, and what is important in our lives usually requires a flexible and multi-dimensional communications medium. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram do many things well, but serving as a platform that extends creativity and celebrates artistry is not part of their repertoire.
Our users are quick to point out that Momentage provides a unique social platform, one that captures the true beauty and spirit of life. Momentage is not alone in promoting freedom of expression. We just do this differently than other social channels whose format limitations accentuate shallowness.
Momentage offers a flexible stage to tell stories, share experiences, teach interactively and communicate visually, all without the constraints, clutter and compromises that typify other social experience apps.
Tarrah: Where is the quality?
George: Social media places a higher priority on speed of delivery than style and substance, making quality suffer. We’re all for economy of words and concise storytelling, but many social channels take this to the point of vacuity.
As a second-generation social channel, Momentage offers the speed of delivery of first-generation social media mainstays like Instagram and Facebook. It eliminates the compromises that impact quality and provides users with the ability to capture stunning moments.
Tarrah: What are the dangers of profligate profiles?
George: There are bad people in every crowd. Danger preys on open channels and feasts on the easy multipliers of social media. Facebook has set the privacy bar for social media. While users may block others from viewing their page person-by-person, the site encourages wide-scale access to personal profiles, photos, etc., and has seen an increasing number of particularly unsavory incidents as a result.
Social media’s personal exploitation issues extend beyond online predators. Revenue for most of the large social media channels comes from the ever-increasing number of ‘targeted’ ads placed in front of their users. With 100% free services, they have no choice but to clog the user’s experience and take advantage of the user’s profile and/or habits.
The bargain between social media sites and users even impacts content ownership. Consumers can unwittingly turn over ownership of their content to the site hosting it. Again, Facebook has established the standard for other social media sites to follow.
The Momentage philosophy has always been to make access control simple, and to maintain personal data integrity within a controlled and respectful environment.
George Castineiras is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Castineiras Ventures, LLC which has established three pioneering companies: ArtStamps.com, 3DActivityBook.com, and Momentage.com.
