Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma” shows how harmful oversharing on social media can be. In addition to security concerns, social sites feed an unhealthy desire to keep up appearances, according to psychologists. So how can we share useful information without the problems associated with most social platforms? The answer is Magma, a free app that blends mobile blog and social media publishing. Lead by a team of digital experts, including a design professional and photographer for brands like Red Bull and GoPro, Magma allows for seamless and controlled sharing of creative content. Below, CEO Jake Warner explains how Magma works and offers his advice for using the platform.
Magma allows users to create their own digital magazines. How easy is it to create a “Mag”?
Creating a Full Mag is extremely easy.
- Once you hit the + you’ll be prompted to design your cover. We provide the tools necessary to do this as easy a creating a “social story” post on other platforms. Or you can design a more intricate one elsewhere and drop it in.
- Next add a page a pick your template. We broke it down to 2 main categories. Article Templates for a page that will consist of text and media, and Gallery Templates for Media only pages.
- Fill your templates by adding photos or videos directly from your camera roll, stock images, YouTube videos, interactive maps and just about every type of Link possible. You can even create graphs and charts to bring your content to another level. The writing aspect is as simple as typing a message on your phone, but with the robust formatting ability of Microsoft word. Add pages and combine templates until you are ready to publish.
- Add a caption, select your genre and publish. It’s that easy to create something truly beautiful and professional looking.
How does sharing work? Can people without the app view a Mag?
Sharing a Mag is awesome. Send your mag to anyone using text, email or whatever messaging option you use. Post it as an Instagram story, a tweet, a Facebook post, or a Pin on Pinterest with one click. Every Mag is given a unique url when published and anyone who comes in contact with that will be able to read a Mag whether they have the app or not. If they are viewing on web they even have the option to view it page by page or as a single scroll blog post.
What inspired the creation of Magma?
There wasn’t a platform in the market that allowed for in depth story telling, pro-level published content and perfect full-resolution media sharing. We wanted to claim our flag as the easiest and most powerful way to publish anything. We felt that the template of Magazine is the perfect vessel for content like this so we recreated how that would look in a modern, mobile centric world. The end result is a tool that can be used to do everything from organizing and sharing large amounts of content, self publishing just about anything and replacing your blog into a real publication.
What advice can you offer students and professionals hoping to use Magma to share their portfolios?
In a world where your phone is being used for the majority of tasks in your social and leisure life, it should be able to help with your most professional needs just as easily.
You shouldn’t have to worry about making it look good, let us do that for you. Using Magma takes the design pain away and lets you make something overall cooler and more fun right from your phone. People will actually love interacting with your portfolio in this new, powerful way.
Also, don’t be afraid to make your Mags a reflection of you. Magma indexes every Mag with Google, so depending on what you publish, it may just go viral across the entire web.
Download Magma in the App store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magma/id1325767750