Choosing what to watch, where to go or what to do with a free evening ought to be straightforward. Instead, it can involve scrolling through several streaming services, checking social media, searching for events and opening yet another app to make a booking. Isaiah Cole believes there is an opportunity to bring those decisions together in one place.
Cole is building UNI, a consumer platform designed to help people discover leisure activities, whether they want to stay at home or go out. The company is currently in an early testing phase, with plans to open the app to a wider audience.
“What we’re building is a one-stop platform for all things leisure that gives our users all the best options of what to do, whether they want to stay in or go out,” he says.
The idea is to create a personalised experience based on a user’s interests rather than present everyone with the same recommendations. When someone creates a profile, they select their media tastes and lifestyle preferences, which UNI uses to develop what Cole calls their “social DNA”.
“It’s basically a taste fingerprint that adapts the more the user uses the app.”
From streaming to going out
For users who prefer to stay in, UNI offers feeds designed to make discovering television and film easier. Short clips introduce programmes available across different streaming services, with links taking users to the relevant platform to watch them. The app also includes live television channels and a feed of articles that can be read alongside the viewing experience.
Cole sees the fragmentation of streaming as a problem for consumers who have plenty of choice but little help deciding what to watch.
“There’s a bunch of different streaming services. They’re all fragmented. They don’t talk to each other, and everyone has decision fatigue, so our purpose is to try to mitigate that through helping users find the things that they care the most about.”
The other side of UNI is designed for people who want to go out. Rather than moving between separate apps for accommodation, transport, events and activities, users can discover options through one hub and then be directed to the relevant partner platform to complete a booking.
A user interested in blockchain, for example, might be shown upcoming conferences, investor events or other relevant activities. Someone with different interests would receive a different set of recommendations.
“Leisure isn’t monolithic. It’s a little bit more binary than people may think. It’s either I want to stay in or go out, and we want to make sure that our users are able to spend their free time as efficiently as possible, regardless of what headspace they’re in.”
A new distribution channel for publishers
UNI is also developing partnerships with media outlets and publishers to supply content for its Daily Viral dashboard, which Cole describes as the “front page of the culture”. Although entertainment and popular culture are the platform’s primary focus, it is also expanding into more informative and educational content.
For publishers, the proposed arrangement is relatively simple. Articles can be brought into UNI through an RSS feed, with the publisher choosing which pieces to distribute and tagging them according to the interests of the intended audience. Users then receive recommendations based on their compatibility with the content, while links direct them back to the publisher’s own website.
“We’re not an aggregator; we’re a taste curator,” Cole says. “All of the content that’s distributed is meant to go to the people who have the most alignment with it.”
For a specialist publication, that could mean reaching readers who have already expressed an interest in a particular subject, such as blockchain, filmmaking or financial technology. Cole says the arrangement is intended to provide publishers with an additional distribution channel rather than replace their existing audience.
“The way we look at it is the more we grow, the more you grow.”
There is currently no payment between UNI and its publishing partners for this distribution arrangement. The company has also begun exploring affiliate partnerships through a marketplace, while longer-term enterprise products based on consumer intelligence remain part of its future plans.
Building the audience first
UNI is still at an early stage. At the time of the interview, Cole said the platform had been available for approximately two months through small testing cohorts, with around 150 users and a social media audience of more than 20,000. The company was preparing for a wider public release later in September.
“Our platform is completely free to use,” he says. “The goal in the immediate phases is growth, growth, growth, and then once you have a sizable user base, that’s when diversification into revenue streams comes in the mix.”
Cole is clear that the proposed enterprise solutions will depend on the company first establishing a meaningful user base and retention. For now, the priority is improving the product, building partnerships and understanding how people use it.
The conversation also touched on possible future additions, including audiobooks, audio fiction and podcasts. Cole, who is an aspiring filmmaker himself, has been researching audio formats and sees them as a potential extension of UNI’s leisure offering, although they are not yet part of the established product.
The ambition is broad, and the challenge will be turning a collection of discovery tools into something people return to regularly. UNI’s proposition is that a better understanding of individual tastes can make the growing number of entertainment and leisure options easier to navigate. Its next stage will be to test whether that proposition can attract an audience beyond its initial cohorts.
