BUMPERS' GUIDE
The Bumping App is is a crowd-curated lifestyle app, which delivers all kinds of inspiration to you from trustworthy sources. It’s simple to use, but here’s a handy guide just so you can get familiar with some of the terms and functions unique to the Bumping App.
Join Pods
At the heart of the Bumping App are pods, which are communities you join to get inspirations for topics you’re interested in from like-minded individuals.
Joining a pod is easy. Just go to the Pod List page and see what’s nearby and what’s popular. Or, search for a pod!
Why call it a pod and not community or group?
There are three reasons for calling a pod a pod. The first is related to conveyed size: a pod can be small or large; it can consist of two friends or thousands of people. A community and a group convey a greater number of people than two. Second, a pod conveys a closer-knit – almost family-like – relationship between people. The Bumping App is about trust, and so pod accentuates that higher degree of trustworthiness. Third, our mascot, Bumpie, is a dinosaur, and it’s common to refer to a collective of dinosaurs as a pod.
It’s Trustworthy
In terms of trust, pods attract like-minded individuals with similar interests, values and lifestyle so there is naturally a level of trustworthiness with regards to psychographic-alignment. Because of this alignment, what a someone in the pod likes or dislikes would likely resonate with others in the pod.
Further, as online communities are open forums where members can identify each other, pods tend to encourage authenticity; members perceive reputational risk should they be caught sharing inaccurate information. Therefore, Bumpers tend to take care in what they share.
The Bumping App also encourages voting on bumps which is a form of peer-review on shared content. You’re not just getting a recommendation from an individual but from many individuals with similar interests.
You can Openly and Creatively Express and Discuss
Just like the saying “there’s a time and place for everything”, there’s also an audience for everything. Pick the right audience for the topic you want to share or discuss. There are some things you would share and discuss with an open pod of thousands of Bumpers, but there are other things you would likely want to share with only your closest friends. So we designed the Bumping App to be a medium not only for those large open discussions, but also for those private, friends-only discussions.
The Bumping App provides many tools for Bumpies to express creatively. Bumpies can apply filters, add text and stickers to images and videos to attach to bumps. Bumps can have multiple images and videos together along with rich-text, external links, and multiple locations attached. Feel the freedom to express your creative self!
It Curates Content to You and You Can Connect with the Author
Bumping App’s Nearby Bumps view curates bumps for Bumpers. Nearby bumps are not delivered by order of proximity. Instead, it uses an intelligent algorithm that delivers bumps by order of relevance within a certain radius from where the Bumper is. This means that if there are bumps from friends or pod members that have not been seen previously, these will be delivered first. Then bumps will be delivered based on a combination of net votes and how recently they were posted. This relevance curation applies to the map-view as well which shows Bumpers exactly where other Bumpers have left bumps in order of relevance.
Bumpers can then easily see if any pod members have been nearby before, shared any experiences, and can even reach out to them for recommendations. Friends in friends-only pods can leave surprises for each other which pop up when the Bumper comes near the surprise. This is another fun way for Bumpers to connect with friends wherever they go.
If there are no friends or pod members that are reachable immediately, Bumpers can post a Shoutout bump to Bumpers nearby. Shoutouts notify nearby Bumpers of your bump and would be useful for quickly alerting nearby Bumpers of something important.
A Medium for Sharing What is Happening Now
One of the main reasons for being connected to local communities is to be in-the-know about what is happening around us now. It’s essentially getting local news from real people whom you trust. This is what the Bumping App aims to do, and the more passionate Bumpers there are in your pods the more in-the-know you will be. The Bumping App provides a number of views including the Nearby Bumps view, the chronological Bump Live view, the Map view, and the Popular bumps view to keep Bumpers informed and in-the-know wherever they go.
