The content creation startup that began as a 7th grade dream and became a reality

Photo credit: dedivan1923 / 123RF.

When I want to entertain myself on the internet, I occasionally click around on Facebook and Twitter, but I use Tumblr more than anything else. Curating my Tumblr to show exactly the content I wanted took several months of searching and following blogs I liked.

For startup Bameslog, a site for content creators and consumers, several months is too long. Instead of curating your content feed yourself, it brings in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning on its site to figure out what users’ preferences are and recommend new content.

On Bameslog, users can watch videos, read content, and create and share their own. Bhupinder Nayyar, together with his high school friend Ajay Thakur, founded the company in August 2013 and released a public beta site in August last year. According to Bhupinder, it currently clocks in 77,000 monthly active users. Its Bangalore team works out of BHIVE Workspace.

To use Bameslog, you log in with your Facebook profile. You can then choose your feed’s content from a list of broad topics including motivation, life, entrepreneur, health, travel, love, India, and others.

If you want to post short Twitter or Facebook status-like updates, you can submit your pithy snippets or images in a box at the top of your feed. To write a longer post, a button in the top right-hand corner takes you to a simplified WordPress or Tumblr-like posting box. Besides text, you can insert pictures, and embed videos or links. A feed on the right shows you trending posts.

Trying out the platform for myself, Bameslog’s combination of features really makes clear the social media melting pot it aims to be. Still, there are plenty of people out there happy to use the LinkedFaceTwittPinTumblr cocktail, so easing users over – and getting them to stick around while the majority of their friends are already on the other social media platforms – will likely remain its biggest challenge, along with cutting through the white noise generated by all of the other content creation hubs out there.

Labor of love

Ajay and Bhupinder, founders of Bameslog. Photo credit: Bameslog.

The startup is no stranger to adversity – it’s the product of a roller coaster-like journey that’s taken over three years. Bameslog is bootstrapped, with a team of around 10 employees. Three work in Bangalore and others work remotely from locations like Yemen and the UK. All of them work for free. Bhupinder says that it’s the belief and love of what they’re doing that keeps them going.

Bameslog got its start as a realization in Bhupinder’s school says, when he found it hard to be interested in what he was reading at school. The problem wasn’t a dislike of reading – it was the type of things he had to read. As many in their generation did, he and Ajay turned to the internet for refuge.

As many in their generation did, he and Ajay turned to the internet for refuge.

“We started writing online,” he tells Tech in Asia. He made an online blogging profile and began writing in 2012. While writing, he was getting videos, pictures, and readings from three or four different platforms. He only wanted to use one.

Appeal to the heart