Minder Gives You Extra Control Over Your Content

Your Work Becomes Your Work

Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably been subjected to the long tail theory at some point in your time online. If you’ve uploaded a picture to Pinterest, a comment on a news story or a status to your Facebook wall, you’ll be familiar with the concept that once something is on the internet, it stays there. That forum comment you thought had been long forgotten (you know the one)? It still sits dormant, waiting patiently to be dredged up by an adept Google-pro and used against you.

Cyberspace, much like my childhood games of stuck in the mud, lives by the law of no takesies backsies.

But entrepreneur Ken Kalb wants to change that. At this week’s Techcrunch Disrupt he debuted Minder, the new service which promises increased power to those of us who upload ideas, videos and pictures to the internet. The program, currently in its beta phase, lets its members decide who can see their content, where they can access it from and how long they can view it for. Those who fall outside this pre-determined ‘geo fence’ are locked out; they simply won't be able to view your work, even if they manage to get hold of a link.

Michael Tracy, VP of StoryCloud, the company supporting Minder, stated in an interview on TechCrunch that “everything stems from the concept the people who create the content should own, control, manage and publish that content.” Sending your work to someone over Facebook is usually throwing it to the wolves. Due to the long tail theory, once your work is out there it belongs to no-one but the internet. Minder, however, changes that.

While other companies have made similar proposals, there is one big difference with Minder: once the time limit is over, your content won't completely disappear (as with rival service Cyber Dust). Instead, it can still be opened by its original uploader, who then has the opportunity of sending it out again with a brand new geo fence attached. This process can be repeated indefinitely, until the author feels ready to share their work publicly.

As a bonus, Minder tracks a whole load of user statistics while doing its thing. It can determine how many people have viewed your content, how much time they spend with it and where abouts they are. You can even combine its features, for example by blocking anyone outside your country from accessing your content while simultaneously discovering how long your fellow countrymen spend accessing it.

While Minder may one day become a mobile app, it is currently billed as a cloud service. It integrates with Dropbox and Box, allowing their millions of users to trade content without the constant fear of plagiarism hanging over every share. During beta, the program is available for free - but StoryCloud do plan to monetise the service when it is finished.

The internet has famously been described as the Wild West - let Minder be your sheriff. 

Emile Cole

Emile is a postgrad from the University of Saint Mark and Saint John. He’s hoping to break into journalism or publishing, and won’t stop blogging until he’s managed it! Follow him @EmileAtSMF.

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