Celebrities Optimize Social Engagement with Steph Curry’s Slyce

Basketball superstar Steph Curry, the point guard for the Golden State Warriors, has partnered with a new social media platform called Slyce. Slyce, a Bay Area startup, is intended to help celebrities utilize social media tools and filter through incoming posts. By using the new platform, influencers are able to optimize social engagement.

Photo courtesy of Twitter.com.

Photo courtesy of Twitter.com.

Steph Curry serves as one of the co-founders of Slyce. Bryant Barr, a former Nike financial analyst, serves as another co-founder, as well as the CEO. A former co-chair of Nike‘s Black Employee Network, Jason Mayden, is listed as a co-founder, and so is Jim Cai, a former LinkedIn engineer.

During an interview with GeekWire, Barr acknowledged celebrities’ struggle to engage in conversations with fans when their following is immense. Barr said that Curry’s social media engagement declined after he reached a certain number of followers. He developed Slyce as a solution to this problem.

The platform works to connect athletes and other influencers to their fans by filtering inbound traffic and pushing out relevant information.

After joining the platform, participants are set up with a Q&A session. For Curry’s Q&A, Slyce sorted through more than 1,000 questions submitted by fans and narrowed it down to the best 35. Then, Curry was shown the questions and told to pick out the “best” or most important questions based on his opinions and values.

After the Q&A session, the platform filters out extra noise, allowing participants to optimize social engagement by encouraging conversations with fans providing relevant questions or comments.

Still in the early developmental stages, Slyce is working on technology that will allow the Q&A process to be more automated.

Since the platform’s launch last week, about 10 athletes have created Slyce accounts, including Baltimore Ravens’ Justin Forsett.

So far, Slyce has employed five people. The company has also raised $900,000.

 

Brooke Moore