Technology: Wekidea, a web application dedicated to sharing ideas

The web-application Wekidea offers a space where individuals can share their ideas. With no profit motive or even recourse to advertising, Simon Tripnaux offers the possibility of sharing only ideas so that others can turn them into reality.

An application to share your ideas exists! Simon Tripnaux, communication manager for the town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, designed Wekidea as a self-taught developer based on a simple observation. Many ideas are thought of or formulated during daily activities. Due to lack of time, financial resources or simply because of their fleeting nature, these ideas are forgotten.

Simon Tripnaux decided to remedy this two years ago in his spare time, knowing how to create websites himself. This project, “launched like a message in a bottle”, aims to allow everyone to “deposit their daily flashes of genius, so that others can seize them”, he affirms.

Wekidea thus operates in reverse of patent logic. Here, users deposit concepts or projects for free so that others can turn them into reality.

Against the current of social networks

The communication manager wanted to go against the grain of web giants. For him, the first break was made in Wekidea’s interface. So that the user can focus solely on the idea, photos and videos are absent.

Instead, there are small colored squares that make room for the concept thought out, “deliberately chosen to create a form of friction, so as not to interfere with reflection”, he explains. The user, in this way, focuses solely on plain text, “without the dictatorship of the image, and if you click on it, you can see a title with a description.”

The other originality lies in its anonymous news feed. Unlike social networks, here, the platform hides the identity of contributors. It is only by clicking on the idea that it is possible to see the username. The goal is to discover the idea before the person. Added to this are practical features such as geolocation of the colored squares, to be able to promote local initiatives.

Simon Tripnaux: “No one loses by sharing their ideas”

For now, the web-application only has a few users, including fifteen regular ones. Simon Tripnaux attributes this discretion to people’s fear of having their idea stolen.

The designer of Wekidea nevertheless defends a model of absolute free access to everything, even on his own advertising-free platform. Drawing a parallel with Wikipedia, “no one loses by sharing ideas”, he sums up.

Simon Tripnaux explains that this “humanistic approach” goes so far as to accept that a stranger takes over his own concept. If a person manages to expand the application, that would be “all the better for humanity.” Today, Wekidea seeks to develop voluntarily, without advertising or data resale, in order to develop the social network on iOS and Android.