Cosmunity Interview at the North Texas Comic Book Show
While at the North Texas Comic Book Show, I had the chance to interview Matt Long, with Cosmunity. Now, as they are still a pretty young company, even those people who attend conventions regularly may not know who or what Cosmunity is, so we asked Matt to help enlighten our readers as to why everyone should check out their app.
Started in 2016 by recent UTD alums Zac Cooner, Chance Hudson, & Texas A&M alum Cole Egger, Cosmunity is a social media & marketplace app that is focused on the "social, transactional, media, and event based interactions" of the comic convention community & gives them a single, unified platform to exist on, rather than across multiple platforms or websites, as it has traditionally been. While the name is a combination of cosplay & community, as that was the original basis for their idea, the app has quickly embraced the entire convention community, from artists & attendees to the convention organizers & everyone in between.
As for the app's interface itself, it has experienced several adjustments/out right overhauls in the two years that it has existed, with each one getting it closer to the goal of an easy to use app for they incredibly varied community of users. Currently, the app is separated into five sections: your feed, which is then filtered by fandoms & users that you follow; notifications, which is where you see the notifications of actions specific to you & the content you have posted, as well as where you can find a list of suggestions of who you should follow; Cosmunity Central, which is the first section that opens when you enter the app & has the current news & highlights from Cosmunity at large; Events, where you can find the various events & conventions that are coming up in your area & around the country, & finally, your profile. As is the nature of most young social media apps, the news feed can be a little lack luster at times, not because of anything wrong with it, but due to the fact that the ALL of the users on the platform aren't always consistent with posting yet, so you tend to see the same platform influencers over & over again, while waiting for everyone else to catch up. Luckily, we should see this problem continue to fix itself as more & more people find out about the app & jump on board with using it.
However, the part that I have personally found invaluable is the events section. Even though I have been involved in the convention community since my late teens & the nerdy community for most of my life, it has been consistently difficult to find out about events that I would like to attend. Prior to the rise of social media, only the very large events had the marketing budget to get the word out about the what, when, & where in a way that made them easy to find. All of the medium to small events, especially the specialty events like game night at your local comic book store or a small fan convention at your local library, were almost exclusively based on word of mouth. This left you completely our of luck if you didn't know someone who knew someone involved with said event. Even today, with social media becoming increasingly more tailored to showing us things related to our interests, events like these can only get so much attention. With the Cosmunity app, on the other hand, that has changed. They allow not only event organizers to post their events, but the users overall. This way, even the small events can be introduced to new people that would want to attend. This is by far the biggest strength that the app has. Matt even pointed out that the app even supports interactive features for during conventions that will allow for an almost entirely mobile experience for you while attending. (It is important to mention that this function is for the featured events that were setup by the event coordinators, who then created the various digital options for their convention, through the app. User submitted events are just event notifications where you can get general information about what to expect & interact with other users who are attending.)
While you may be reading this & be thinking that it sounds cool, but you're just not sure if you NEED another social media app to deal with, rest assured: if you are someone who attends conventions or wants to attend conventions or other nerdy events, you really SHOULD get this app. With more & more features coming out all the time to make the experience better for the users, it is worth getting in now & beginning your nerdy fun today!