Idea 063 - RootedIn

This post is part of the 100 project ideas project. #The100DayProject. I am looking for feedback. Comment below or DM me via social media Instagram, Twitter.

One Line Pitch

A generated a social media platform for trees in a city.

Description

The Vancouver Open Data has a dataset for all public trees on boulevards in the City of Vancouver and provides data on tree coordinates, species and other related characteristics.

There are over 100,000 trees, each with an ID, and a species name. Kwanzan Flowering Cherry, Pissard Plum, Norway Maple, Crimean Linden, Pyramidal European Hornbeam, Night Purple Leaf Plum, Red Maple, Kobus Magnolia, Bowhall Red Maple, Akebono Flowering Cherry

I propose we make a spoof of Facebook using the Trees as citizens of the city. Each tree will have its own page that details some statistics about them. A generated Tree name, random tree based hobbies, groups that they are part of. A wall, with conversations with other trees or messages that people have left them.

The conversations with other trees can be generated using ChatGPT. Each tree’s wall should have at least 10 messages from other trees. This is to show that the trees are talking to each other on a social network.

The conversations could be generated, new messages could pop up on the social network each week. Every week generate 100 new messages for a random set of trees. Because of how ChatGPT the messages can be based on any of the new messages from other trees or based on the human comments.

The trees should be able to reply to the human comments as if they were a tree with context from what the humans leave. Thanks to ChatGPT.

The Tree name of each tree should be a pun on their species name and location. Use ChatGPT to help generate the names. All names should be unique and used for key lookups in the database.

• Kwanzan Flowering Cherry - Cherry Potter
• Pissard Plum - Sir Pissard Plum
• Norway Maple - Maple Syrup
• Crimean Linden - Linda Linden
• Pyramidal European Hornbeam - Beamer the Horn-y Tree
• Night Purple Leaf Plum - Purple Reign
• Red Maple - Scarlet Mapleton
• Kobus Magnolia - Magnolia Blossom
• Bowhall Red Maple - Reddington Maple
• Akebono Flowering Cherry - Sakura Blossom

The profile pictures can be generated using Stable Diffusion to be cartoon versions of their species. These profile pictures can be replaced at a future date with real photos of the tree that users upload.

Users of the site should be able to leave the tree’s messages. Write on their wall. Give status updates, or upload photos of each of the trees.

My hope is that giving people a way to interact with the public will make people care about the trees and water them, etc…

If this project takes off we can make little dog tags for each tree with a QR code back to the social media page for that tree. Then random people walking by the tree can interact with the tree in front of them.

We can pull in comments from other social media sites with a special HashTag with the Tree name in it. This allows people to interact with the trees on their own sites.

Adding a feature that shows the age of the tree, including a leaderboard of the oldest trees in Vancouver, would make the site more informative.

if it works in one city, it should work anywhere there is good open data for trees. This social media for trees could be a world wide thing.

I think coming up with a joke name for this project is the most important thing to help it spread. Here is a list that ChatGPT made but doesn’t quite do it for me. Treebook, BarkingTree, BranchOut, TimberTwitter, ForestFaces, SappySnap, TrunkSpace, RootedIn, LeafLife, Woodpecker, BranchChat, ForestFriendz, TweetingTrees, TrunkTweet, SproutSpace.

Prior art

The concept of creating a social network for non-human entities has been explored before (e.g., a social network for pets)

• People around the world have been emailing trees in Melbourne to confess their love
• AI Story Generators
• Chirper AI - This is a Social Network for AI. No humans allowed.

Market

Individuals who are passionate about the environment, nature enthusiasts, gardeners, horticulturists,