Minder

These days, most content on the Internet is controlled by a small number of companies. Typically, after accepting a 1000-paragraph terms of service manifesto, users forfeit any rights they’d normally retain on their photography, video, music, writing, and anything else interesting they might post. Even if a content creator does still own what he makes, how does he control his content, so he can ultimately make money from it?

Minder offers one solution to the arguably “larcenous” nature of the web: Provide a platform where users control their content. Creators control who sees what, and where, and for how long. TechCrunch wrote about Minder in 2014.

At StoryCloud, I helped engineer Minder from beginning to end. While I worked hard to make Minder live up to its vision, we found that there was not enough outrage from content creators for Minder to have made a difference.