Beams, the newest app in town, shines a light on Edinburgh.
This is a new fun way to share audio-visual stories on your interest by using a very user friendly new app, connecting with other people and without ranking by the number of followers or likes.
Beams is aimed at providing a platform where people can share more freely than some other forms of social media.
Opening Beams is like being at a party and connecting with new and interesting people through their hobbies and interests. Users create a post with an image, caption and voice note and add it to their beam, then repeat it.
You can create a beam on any topic – The Edinburgh Reporter has begun a beam about Ghost Signs using some of the photos we have taken. Audio has recently been introduced to Beams, and soon it will offer collaborative beams.
Edinburgh-based Michael MacLeod is one of the app’s community managers and well-known in the capital, as he was the Edinburgh Beatblogger until The Guardian ended its experiment in local journalism in 2011. Since then he has had a whirlwind tour of London with Vogue.
His role is to find new users and help them to experiment with Beams and with a background in newspapers and a coding course at CodeClan under his belt, Michael is certainly tech-savvy.
He said: “I am really happy in this job helping to share people’s stories. I get to meet lots of users online. This app is for people of all ages who have something to say and now that we have added audio to every post, the whole environment has come to life. It is completely international with some Beams about lockdown in different parts of the world.
“This app is a baby of the pandemic and lockdown and people being stuck at home are also looking for ways to collaborate or share more, but not wanting to do it on their own social media feeds. The next thing will be that people can collaborate on joint lists – things like a book club list might work quite well. We are listening to what all the users say to us about using it.”
https://onbeams.com/
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
