Peanut Forum is a one-to-many communication tool that lets a speaker — the one — hold a Q&A with an audience of any size — the many — without any gatekeepers or intermediaries.
Speakers and hosts decide in advance how many questions they're going to take, creating a scarce resource — X number of question slots.
Audience members then ask questions to fill these slots and endorse them, creating a leaderboard of the most popular questions. But they can also merge questions. Merged questions carry the endorsements of both of the questions they were derived from, boosting them towards the leaderboard and making the act of finding common ground with others the dominant strategy.
Social media and the influence networks that people instinctively form in social media distort discourse. When we are named we act demonstratively — to be seen to act — and follow others who are popular as a proxy for having our own opinions. These are literally the dynamics that make social media a viable business model, and are inextricable from it.
On Peanut Forum, content is king. Thoughts and ideas stand on their own.
At the same time, Peanut Forum audiences are restricted and validated. If you're running for office in a certain district, you can be sure that your audience is an audience of humans who live in that district, and no one or nothing else.
A Peanut Forum can last anywhere between a few hours and a few weeks, but in most cases the first round will be slow and should be measured in weeks. Merge activity takes time and it's best to wait until the leaderboard is stable before answering questions.
There are three roles on Peanut Forum:
If you want to host a Peanut Forum, register by sending an email to peanutforum.app@gmail.com. Once registered you'll get instructions on how to invite and assign speakers and how to invite audience members.
Speakers and hosts should interact through the web site on a full sized screen.