SceneSpot @JoinSceneSpot

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Most of you who know me well have already met @WhitnWild_ . She’s my other half, but honestly that doesn’t even cover it. She’s my love, my partner in crime, my best friend, and my business partner. I was burning 16-hour days, chained to the corporate world, already looking for the next job before the current one had even stopped draining me. Whitney was the one who looked at me and basically said: trust God, trust yourself, and let’s build our own thing again. So we did. Not some cute little side project. Not a hobby. We started building something that belonged to us. Together, we’ve built an empire from exhaustion, faith, stubbornness, bad ideas, good ideas, late nights, and the refusal to keep making somebody else’s dream bigger than our own. And we’re not done.

Most people would ask, what would you do with $1.2 million? I’m actually curious what that number means to different people. For me, I think I’d finally pay myself, pay off the debt we took on while building the company, put enough aside to retire @WhitnWild_ while we finish @JoinSceneSpot, then put the rest back into the business. Hire. Replace myself in some of the art and technical roles. Buy back the one thing I’m constantly short on: time. Would $1.2 million take some pressure off? Absolutely. But I don’t think the work stops. I think it just changes which work I’m responsible for. What would you do with it? Better yet, tag the people you’re bringing with you when you get there.

Ⱥmerican Trucker 🇺🇸 @taylorbilt

7 days ago

The problem with AI, some people will believe anything...

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Yeah, we actually received a soft offer from a VC, but it came with a list of things they’d want changed for the seed round. That made something click for me. We’ve built SceneSpot extremely lean, and we’re already SOC 2 Type II compliant. If we skip the seed round, it really just means we hire the team before we start paying ourselves. We’ve already been doing that for almost two years. What’s another few months if it means we don’t have to start compromising the product?

Bruce Young @ecoay

2 weeks ago

WE DON’T WANT YOUR MONEY That is probably a terrible thing for a startup founder to say. Good. SceneSpot is not raising a seed round. Not because we think money is evil. Not because investment automatically makes a company bad. And definitely not because we think we are

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Tired of feeling like you have to perform for an algorithm just to exist online? Good. I’m looking for people to help alpha test something very different. I’ve spent a lot of time studying recommendation systems lately. The more I understand how they work, the more convinced I am that I don’t want SceneSpot to become another platform where your entire experience revolves around pleasing a ranking model. SceneSpot is built around something else: Your people. Your city. Your music. Your favorite spots. The weird little communities you actually belong to. It’s still early. Very early. Which is exactly why I want people who are frustrated with what social media has become testing it now. Not influencers. Not “growth hackers.” Not people looking for another audience to monetize. I want the people who miss when the internet felt like a place you went instead of a machine you performed for. The alpha will be rough in places. You’ll find bugs. Some ideas will probably suck. Some things will change because the testers tell me they should. That’s the point. I don’t need users yet. I need accomplices. People willing to kick the tires, break things, tell me when I’m wrong, and help shape what SceneSpot becomes before the rest of the internet gets here. If that sounds like you, reply here or DM me and I’ll see if you are a good fit for our testing group. And feel free to share this to the one person you know who constantly says: “Social media used to be better.”

New feature inspired by a conversation this morning: It feels like every conversation eventually gets dragged into religion or politics now, no matter where it started. So we’re building around a simple idea: I want to decide what I hear and see. Not an algorithm deciding what will make me angry enough to keep scrolling. Not somebody else deciding what I should care about. If you want politics, follow politics. If you want religion, follow religion. If you want neither, your social network shouldn’t keep shoving both into your face anyway. Your feed should reflect your interests, not the platform’s engagement strategy.

@ecoay Imagine Founding the Original AI group on X or the Original Creators Workspace. Get in on the ground level!

We’re opening 500 pre-alpha Founder spots. Not users. Founders. We’re looking for community builders who want to get in before this opens to the public and help shape what comes next. Founders will be able to: • Found their own global community • Give that community Founder status • Unlock the Founder badge • Carry Alpha Community status from day one This is invite-only right now. Once the 500 Founder spots are gone, they’re gone. If you’ve ever wanted to build a community from the ground floor instead of showing up after everything is already established, DM me.

Finally! this account is being rebranded as we speak

Bruce Young @ecoay

3 weeks ago

I guess now that we’re actively in pre-alpha and operating SceneSpot in a live environment, I can finally tell you a little more about what we’ve been building. The real social experiment started in 1999 and evolved into SceneSpot in 2002. If you want the full history, receipts

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I guess now that we’re actively in pre-alpha and operating SceneSpot in a live environment, I can finally tell you a little more about what we’ve been building. The real social experiment started in 1999 and evolved into SceneSpot in 2002. If you want the full history, receipts and timeline, you can dig through the Founder’s Deck here: canva.link/akzy7b5gdxdv4oo After watching social networking slowly turn into something dominated by influencers, products, pay-to-play reach and algorithms deciding what you’re allowed to see, I got tired of complaining about it. So almost two years ago, I went back to work on the thing I had already spent most of my life thinking about. SceneSpot is not an attempt to copy whatever platform happens to be winning right now. It is the next evolution of something I had already built decades ago, updated for the internet we actually have today. The goal is simple: Bring the social back to social networking. Less influencer gatekeeping. Less product-first design. Less algorithmic control over who gets seen and who disappears. More discovery. More community. More personality. More local culture. More actual people. An environment where anyone has a chance to break through, where your feed is not entirely dictated by an opaque recommendation engine, and where being interesting matters more than already being popular. Maybe that sounds ambitious. It is. But I’ve had 25 years to think about it. You can learn more in the Founder’s Deck and join the waiting list at SceneSpot.com. Alpha testing is currently invite-only, but if you’re interested in being one of the early adopters helping us break things before everyone else gets in, shoot me a DM. We’ve spent long enough letting algorithms decide who gets a voice. I’d rather build something different.

For more than a decade, I worked myself to death building someone else’s dream. Twelve-hour days. Fourteen-hour days. Sometimes sixteen. I gave that profession everything I had because that’s what we were taught responsible men were supposed to do. Work hard. Stay loyal. Keep your head down. Build a stable life. Then one day, the profession I had spent more than ten years building was simply gone. No loyalty ceremony. No protection for the years sacrificed. Just a reminder that the machine will consume as much of your life as you’re willing to feed it, then replace you the moment the numbers say it should. Thankfully, they didn’t leave me with nothing. They left me with time. Time to return to the work I had been carrying for nearly 25 years. SceneSpot isn’t a new idea I came up with after losing my job. It is the culmination of my life’s work. Every community I built, every artist I worked with, every failed project, every lesson, every line of code and every idea I had to place on a shelf while I was busy surviving. I finally had the time to bring it all together. Today, the main project is finished. We’re stress-testing it now. Next comes a small friends-and-family pre-alpha, where we’ll break what can be broken, repair what needs repairing, and prepare it for the people it was built to serve. I’m not telling you this just to announce a project. I’m telling you because millions of people are working themselves into the ground building lives they don’t own. They keep telling themselves they’ll pursue their dream when work slows down. When the kids get older. When the money is better. When life finally gives them permission. Life does not give permission. Sometimes it takes everything away and waits to see what you build from the wreckage. A job is not your identity. A company is not your family. Stability is often just dependence wearing a respectable shirt. We are entering a turning point in society. People are beginning to understand that the tools to build, publish, create, organize and compete are no longer reserved for corporations and gatekeepers. So build the thing. Write the book. Start the company. Record the song. Create the platform. Open the shop. Make the product you keep complaining doesn’t exist. Stop working yourself to death building someone else’s dream while yours dies quietly in the background. You may not get the perfect opportunity. You may get laid off. You may get buried. You may have to build from underneath the dirt. Build anyway. SceneSpot is almost ready. They thought they ended my career. They accidentally funded my return.

@ecoay Please it will take yo 5 minutes its just a Power Point!

Would a few of my fellow creators help me review SceneSpot’s founder deck? It traces the platform’s roots from my early online communities to the rebuild today. I need honest feedback on what lands, what drags, and what needs more proof. Reply or DM me.

Market Research: Would you pay more for a premium apparel brand if it was 100% made in the USA from cotton to stitch and hand print?

I am back! Happy belated Father’s Day to all. Finally got my account back after over a year!

After over a year my 2010 account is back! So this will go back to being my company page. For those new friends please follow my main account.

Bruce Young @ecoay

2 months ago

I am back! Happy belated Father’s Day to all. Finally got my account back after over a year!

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@brockpierson Sometimes

Tales of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I didn’t disappear. I went dark. Buried in code. Wired into the build. Been prepping for something that’s gonna flip the social game inside out no name drops yet, just know it ain’t another “look at me” app. It’s built for us. I’ve worked so long I forgot what sleep feels like. But I’d rather be tired and building the future than rested and stuck in the past. Stay tuned. The launch isn’t coming. It’s rising.

@DallasDHom I can’t wait to share with you