I discovered Incogo last year, when the platform was still in its infancy. The concept of creating and posting on different journeys appealed to me back then but the platform was lacking some functionality like cross posting and long posts back then. So, after experimenting with it a bit I forgot about it again. Until a couple of months ago when I decided to check it out again. The fact that I hadn’t deleted the app on my phone had actually worked as a reminder to do this.
By now I’m an avid user of the platform and the fact that I can cross post to Facebook, which is still my main social media platform, helps a lot with this.
So, why use Incogo? Why spend time on a, for the moment, small social media platform with just over 7500 users? The answer is easy, because the concept is radically different from the other platforms out there. It’s geared towards mutual support.
When you create an account on Incogo you are not presented with topics to follow but with people’s journeys you want to support. These journeys are categorized so you can pick them more easily. I do sometimes wonder why people put their journey in the category they put it in but then again, who am I to judge?
Your timeline consists only of posts made on the journeys you support. That means no algorithms to decide for you what you want to see and, most importantly, no advertisements! I really hope they can keep it that way.
And then it’s your turn to create your own journey. And this is fun! It’s like a mini blog which people actually react to. You are invited to set a title for your journey that is action oriented. Like ‘Writing a book’ or ‘Learning to play the guitar’ or ‘Dissecting politics’. Anything goes. The mere fact that you are consciously creating a journey sets the tone for your posts. It really feels you are working towards something, even if you don’t know where you’ll end up.
I’ve created 4 journeys myself. The key to gathering support lies in adding a picture to it. After only a couple of months one of my journeys now has 140 supporters and that number grows with each post I make. Not something I can say about my posts on my own blog site.
On top of all this the staff at Incogo is supportive. Every time I post something in the ‘Growing Incogo’ journey, which functions as the support forum. I usually have a reply within a couple of hours. They are open to suggestions, are very helpful when you encounter a problem and are very dedicated to making the user experience a great one.
Incogo is social media for real people on real journeys. This includes sharing the struggles and hardships along the way and knowing that you are not alone. There is definitely still room to grow in functionality but I’m happy to be on board for the trip. It’s an exciting one!
