About three years ago, my tech-savvy buddy Kurt Collins and I asked ourselves a question: Is there an app that allows you to take snippets of conversations and share them with the appropriate context? Our circle of friends had said some amazing, crazy, and funny things over the years, and we would have loved to have documented them. We also thought it could have some other interesting uses. An afternoon of chatting later, we realized the app didn’t already exist. So we made it.
Our free iPhone app Quote UnQuote is now alive, the product of learning app design, leaning on mentorship, and quite a few all nighters. We’ve had beta testers (i.e. guinea pigs) over the past year capturing quotes all around the world. We expect Apple to approve the app by this summer.
The experience not only has given me the pride of accomplishment, but it also has given me money. In fact, if it wasn’t for QuQ, TED Books wouldn’t have published my new title Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed with Documenting Our Lives Online. Innovative decisions breed remarkable opportunities.
Let me back up and give a few reasons why working on a free app helped give my career a boost.
1. Book deal: Research, exploration prepares you for profit: Quote UnQuote is all about the interesting conversations that are happening around the world every single day. As I dived deeper into research our app, however, I realized that there were limitations to how social media could capture moments in their lives. There was only so much we could translate into Facebook, Twitter – and even into my own app!
I shared our modern existential dilemma with a colleague in charge of TED Books, a new division of the popular TED Conferences. We realized that there was a book there and, because I had been researching the topic for QuQ since 2010, I was ready to write the book quickly. The Our Virtual Shadow e-book came out this May and hit the Amazon Kindle Tech top 5, right behind Steve Jobs’ biography.
2. Platform diversification: Exposure to a wider audience: Authors are told early to develop a platform – that is, the means in which people who are interested in your book would actually hear about it. Endorsements from Oprah, Jon Stewart, and other celebrities are coveted because they can expose your work to millions of people. A guest appearance on a morning talk show, an interview on a radio program, or a column in a major metropolitan newspaper can be effective, too.
Quote UnQuote has seriously expanded my platform, from speaking invites and consulting opportunities to traditional story assignments and media interviews. And those talks, articles, and interviews are leading to more talks, articles, and interviews. My side project is now helping pay the bills.
3. Objectivity: Understanding modern media better: Working outside of the daily freelance grind has given me more objectivity on our profession. A new idea isn’t limited to another magazine article I can write, but it could be a long-form essay in The Atavist, a content deal with mobile distributors Sutro Media, a self-published e-book, or even my next app. Imagine if Kurt and I didn’t have that chat, and I just settled on writing a piece about how my friends say funny things while we’re out. The app, the book, and the other opportunities wouldn’t even exist.
The beauty is that we have more tools than ever, digital and otherwise. Don’t know programming? Collaborate with someone who does. Not sure if you have an app idea or an essay idea? Connect with organizations like ASJA and bounce it off your colleagues. Wondering about how others got into apps? Get social and follow them on Twitter to learn more about their process. In our modern environment, the isolated journalist is pretty much dead.
I totally agree with Ann Friedman’s powerful CJR essay: This is the best moment to be in journalism. We have to get creative to make a living, which can become your rise or become your fall.
It’s a new world. What are you going to do in it?