Here are the top projects from Betahack, A Hackathon to ‘Fix The Internet’
Over the past two weeks, we hosted a virtual hackathon and event series to inspire more creative projects at Betalab. The hackathon brought together over 230 collegiate and indie developers to hack together something fun, meet one another, and learn something new. We hosted a series of events with top thinkers in the space, provided mentorship with talented entrepreneurs, convened to talk about important ideas. Today, we’re excited to announce the winners and top projects produced from Betahack.
The top projects 🥇
1st Place: Joyn Social Media (by John & Sophie)
The team at Joyn put together a beautifully designed idea around better control of users’ content algorithms and feeds. Through giving users a conscious choice of how their content is shown, they are provided a more conscious understanding of their filter bubbles and how they should consider diversifying their consumption in today’s media ecosystem. Learn more, here.
2nd Place: “A web monetization story” (by Sharon & Elliot)
Sharon and Elliot came into Betahack excited about the opportunity to build upon a new monetization tool built by Coil called ‘Web Monetization’. Their insight? With any new tool comes the challenge of onboarding and bootstrapping community. As a result, they built an awesome tutorial on how to install this tool on your website all embedded in an interactive story about Auden and their pet dog Chicken. Learn more, here.
3rd Place: True-Identity (by Calvin Pak)
Today, we really never know whether or not the comment, message, or photo we’re checking out is brought to you by a real person. Calvin wanted to help solve that by building a signature tool to verify content owner identities before posting to social media. By using KYC (Know Your Customer) and combining it with a unique and verifiable signature using Ethereum, people can now build a source of truth around what content they’re posting. Learn more, here.
Best Projects by Category 🤩
Best “New Capitalism” Project: MoneyStream (by Dave Foderick)
Earn money by watching advertisements. Check it out, here.
Best “Human Centric Design” Project: ❤ (by Kevin Habich)
No more algorithmic recommendations, get recommendations from real people. Check it out, here.
Best “Communication” Project: Vox of Life (by Magus, Shiv, Samuel, Patrick)
Engage in spontaneous and one on one meaningful voice calls with all walks of life. Check it out, here.
Best “Data Ownership” Project: GATE (by Min Ni)
Use short and easy to remember passcodes, defeat peeking, keylogging, phishing, etc. Check it out, here.
Best “Synthetic Media” Project: SYNGAN (by Babu Sharan)
Synthetic video generator that uses FaceGAN and deepfakes to make custom speaking models of your choice. Check it out, here.
Best “Online Identity & Space” Project: True-Identity (by Calvin Pak)
Content and identity verification for social media. Check it out, here.
Best “Ethical AI” Project: Joyn Social Media (by Sophie and John)
Tunable content algorithms. Check it out, here.
Thank you 🤜 🤛
We couldn’t be more excited about the turnout for this event and to have met such a wonderful group of people. Thank you to each participant for joining us for Betahack.
Judges, speakers, and mentors!
- Nathan and Mat, Founders from Greater Than Learning
- Reggie James, Co-founder & CEO at Eternal
- Yael Eisenstat, Researcher-in-Residence at Betaworks
- Margot Boyer-Dry, Culture & Business Writer at New York Times, New York Mag, and WSJ
- Edwin Akrong, Head of Product at Simon Data, Former Director of Product at NBA
- Diya Sagar, Associate at Lupa Systems
- Matt Hartman, Partner at Betaworks Ventures
- Fahim Abouelfadl, PM at Betaworks Camp
- Danika Laszuk, GM at Betaworks Camp
Thank you to Segment
Thank you to Graham Hunter for not only joining us with your session on building privacy-preserving analytics but also in having Segment as our sponsor and partner for the Hackathon. Learn more about how Segment can help collect, clean, and control your customer data, here.
