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Bond wants you to get off the couch and get back into the real world, its creator says. The new platform's AI system is designed to motivate users to do things away from the app.
Legacy social media sites have been designed to keep us hooked to our devices, eyes glued endlessly to retina-frying feeds of memes and dumb videos in order to create more engaged platforms for advertisements. In recent years, however, a swell of companies have sought to capitalize on users’ burnout, pushing users to engage in IRL experiences, or offering products without addictive features like endless scroll.
Bond, which officially launched on Tuesday, is one of those sites. Dino Becirovic, Bond’s co-founder and CEO, says that his site offers an AI-powered solution to Americans’ screen addiction.
The site works like this: Much like a normal social media platform, users post about what they’ve been up to lately. Bond allows users to update their profiles, posting what it calls “memories,” via a variety of mediums, including pictures, video, and audio files.
Unlike other sites, Bond is designed to act as a kind of idea generator for what the user should go and do in the real world.
Experiences stored within Bond become fodder for its AI system, which then gets trained on what kind of personalized, event-based recommendations to make to the user, Becirovic says.
For instance, if you’ve been posting a lot about how much you like pho and how you haven’t had it in awhile, Bond’s system might recommend a nearby Vietnamese restaurant that is getting good reviews. Or, if you’re into heavy metal, Bond might point out that Iron Maiden is coming to your city next week.