‘State’ your opinion in new online network

Formed by Alex and Mark Asseily, two British-Lebanese entrepreneurs, State is looking to collate the world’s opinion on a huge variety of topics: from politics to art, to food and gaming.

Writing on State’s homepage, the Asseilys explain: “We set up State because today most people’s voices aren’t getting heard. Even on sites that seem to offer a level playing field, a minority of users do most of the talking. What’s most popular or trending drowns out everything else. We want State to tear down all the barriers that stop people having a voice.”

Unlike social networks, which connect you to people you know, State wants to create connections between people based on what they think.

On signing up, users are asked to either ‘tune in’ or ‘tune out’ of select topics. The choices made here are used to populate a home screen, highlighting opinions that may be of interest.

Users are also encouraged to ‘state’ an opinion on something straight away. I chose Paper, the news feed app released in the US by Facebook. After choosing my subject, I was asked to select up to three phrases that summed up my opinion. I picked ‘want to try’, and in the free-text box I wrote: “Looks good. Hopefully we’ll see a UK rollout soon.”

After submitting my opinion, I was presented with the screen below, which shows the top word groupings for Paper, where my opinion falls on the sentiment range, and how many other people have a similar view point to me, as well as those with a different opinion.

If you want to know what people on State think about State, click here.

And if you want to know what people think about market research, click here.