Goodbye, Reddit AMAs and hard-to-follow Twitter Q&As. Hello, Flawk.
A communication tool of one-to-many, Flawk revolutionizes the way celebrities and fans interact. The real-time engagement platform is a lot like hosting live AMAs with your Twitter followers.
See also: 15 Fascinating Reddit AMAs You Need to Read
Co-founders Kabriel Robichaux and Matt Coalson met 12 years ago at game development company Electronic Arts; they've been dreaming up Flawk for the past six.
"We spent most of our careers building games to let thousands of people fight the same dragon online," Robichaux tells Mashable. "Why can't we have 100 people talk to Katy Perry at the same time? Why do we have to leave a message on Twitter and hope that sometime, they'll get back to us?"
Robichaux and Coalson don't mind waiting in line for hours for Comic-Con and Q&A panels — they know fans interacting with celebrities can be fun and rewarding, and that AMAs and Q&As are often the best ways to do so.
But old Twitter feeds, inactive AMAs and interviews posted on YouTube don't offer true engagement, Robichaux says. Nothing beats being in the same room as a celebrity and getting a real, human connection, but that's highly inconvenient both fiscally and physically.
Q&A platforms, then, need to simulate that experience in better ways.
Current platforms lack the depth of interaction fans seek — AMAs and Twitter Q&As aren't truly "instant," Robichaux says, and people also haven't combined individual platforms to create an engaging experience. You can tweet about a YouTube video, but the entities, for the most part, remain separate.
"Reddit and Twitter are just hints at what people are looking for," Robichaux says. "No one really wants to go to Reddit and refresh an old 1984 page on Seinfeld — but they want that engagement opportunity."
Robichaux points out that most of a celebrity's audience is on Twitter, not Reddit.
"Katy Perry has 50 million followers. How many of those are on Reddit and understand the Reddit environment? It's not the solution for actual audiences," he says.
Participating in an AMA also requires a verified Reddit account. Twitter embodies a broadcast-like platform, with the main interactions being retweets and replies. It's also difficult to find and follow Twitter questions and answers, especially chronologically.

Image: Flawk
"Anyone in the world should be able to interact with anyone they admire," Robichaux says.
Flawk employs a one-to-many communication model that lets fans do more than just look at content, wade through Reddit or expand Twitter conversations. It puts both sides in the same online "event," as if everyone were in the same room.
Celebrities can easily talk to fans without setting aside time to pick and choose questions, and fans get the real-time engagement they want.
It transforms the one-to-many communication model, with which there are no limits.

"Flawk" refers to both the company and the actual online event. The process is straightforward: Users access Flawk through their Twitter accounts and choose a sheep avatar in the spirit of self-expression. From there, you can chat, ask and vote on questions.
The Flawk URL matches the Twitter namespace — twitter.com/beyonce becomes flawk.to/beyonce, for example. Whoever hosts the Flawk has control of the arena — which songs or videos to play, what question to answer and which person to interact with, all on their own time. You can play YouTube and SoundCloud directly on the page.
Everyone else's live chat runs at the bottom of the page, making actual Q&As much easier to follow. You can watch a conversation with a celebrity play out, rather than a carefully crafted response to a tweet.

Image: Flawk
The company, currently based in Palo Alto, Calif., is working on exporting conversations, adding moderators and creating a native mobile app. It also wants to help further any given celebrity's reach.
In December 2013, Beyoncé dropped a new album exclusively on iTunes. Instead, she could have shared her work with her international fans at the same time and gotten instant reactions while she was with them online.
Flawk aims to let artists and producers premiere new content simultaneously and worldwide. Alternatively, a politician could use it to easily interact with his or her constituents, or a CEO could hold office-wide meetings that include telecommuters.
No more conference calls? Sign us up.
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