This is a random interactive content idea that popped into my head while trying to drown out The Great British Bake Off – it was something to do with Apples and Halloween – Bake Off, not the idea.
I was pondering things I like on the web. Reading, recipes, and general content of interest browsing. The food on the TV obviously sent me subliminal signals as my mind turned to TerminusDB and recipe websites – BBC Good Food to be precise.
Being a moderate cook, I like the recipes on BBC Good Food and often a recipe will include several comments from people adding their twists to it. It got me thinking that it’d be pretty cool to be able to create your version of the recipe and have that available alongside the original.
Being a Terminator, I immediately thought about TerminusDB’s ability to branch the database – the data in this instance being the recipe and imagery. This functionality would be easy to introduce to the web frontend.
Say, for example, I’ve just added some of my own pizzazz to a BBC Good Food recipe and decided to tell the world about it. On the website, I could add my own take on it. With a simple click of a button, I could add a new version. This would create a new branch and the authentication or submitted user details can form the metadata about the branch. When I’m done, I save my version, i.e. ‘added a splash of red wine vinegar here’. These changes would then be committed to that branch.
When I next go to add my version of a recipe, I could be automatically directed to my branch to make another commit. Before long, I’m building a collection of my own curated recipes.
When viewing other people’s recipe versions I’d see the diff view – easy to see what’s changed. Because all the commit details and data changes are queryable, the BBC could introduce features like gamifying this interaction with upvotes, social interaction with the ability to follow contributors, and do all sorts of marketing and engagement things with these features.
Suddenly, their website moves from a recipe site to a food social network for like minded food enthusiasts.
It’s not just recipes either, perhaps clothes retailers could let their customers pick and choose outfit combinations and create their own style guides. That is influencer heaven – all those ‘talented’ influencers could monetize their own collections to the delight of retailers who can leverage a greater online following and with it sales.
I also like the thought of a Substack-style site where stories are interactive – let people contribute alternative endings, or books that have a million different outcomes. Wouldn’t it be cool if your favorite authors teamed up to create stories where you could decide the route?
Anyway, that was my random thought of the day – thanks Bake Off.
If you’re worried about all that excess data too, each branch only stores the changes as deltas, and references the real data in main so the actual memory usage would be minimal.
I think it’d be pretty cool to let more people contribute and be part of something.