Origin of Idea

Grace Bucking

Our project went through a lot of ups and downs to get to where it is today. We started out with a completely different idea, and it has been developed into something else entirely, but hopefully much more effective! Our original idea was to create essentially an altered version of Twitter that has different features designed to be more helpful to residents of favelas. As we were evolving this idea, however, we realized that it was not necessary to basically recreate an already perfectly suitable website. We went back to the drawing board and started brainstorming with Adam, Saba and Alison about what characteristics of Twitter we were so intrigued by, etc. As we were discussing these things, we went back to our notes from the trip. Specifically when we were in Vidigal, we talked a lot about Facebook and Twitter during our meeting. As we were flipping back through our notes, both Charlee and I noticed that one of the people we were talking with, Felipe, had mentioned something about how it would be useful to have instruction on how to use these social media networks better. In my notebook, I had starred and underlined this piece of information because it stood out to me at the time. We all agreed that this idea was something worth pursuing, especially because it had specifically been mentioned by one of our colleagues in Rio. We redirected our brainstorming based on this new concept, and generated the idea of creating a website designed to help new Twitter users, and, more importantly, give strategies on how to use Twitter to your advantage. There are so many things that Twitter can be used for, and it can be a very effective tool for getting information out. Unfortunately, many people do not know how to best go about using it for this. The goal of our project is to help favela residents use Twitter to benefit them in ways more than just for social or personal reasons.