New App from Naples Native

Simplifies Your Social Media Management

by Ron McGinty and Courtney Caldwell

t was a crisp day in Everglades City last winter when I had a peek into the future. I was with my friend and fellow photographer, David Bankston. He told me social media had become too cumbersome to enjoy. David had my interest because I follow over 1,900 Twitter feeds plus another 1,000 between Facebook and LinkedIn. Knowing David as socially connected, fiercely intelligent and revolutionary, I had to know more. These five words define the visionary mind behind Sparksfly, the new mobile discovery app that aggregates multiple social media feeds and organizes posts according to the things you love, saving valuable time in the real world. Too many posts, too many feeds? Sparksfly is a brand-new way to manage your social. I was immediately hooked, because I am a disciple of the power of social media.

Naples’ own David Bankston first birthed the idea behind Sparksfly out of frustration. In an attempt to follow and keep up with the myriad of conversations on each of his  Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn feeds, he became overwhelmed with social media fatigue. Learning that he was part of the 43 percent of consumers who also share his concern, he became eagle-eye focused on solving the big problem of applying the simplification movement to social channel fatigue. In 2012, David started to do the one thing that serial entrepreneurs are so known and revered for: he stared at the problem until he unhinged a solution. Ask any leader, and you’ll learn that those entrepreneurs who succeed the fastest are laser-light focused: following one course until successful.

But developing a next-generation technology is nothing new to David Bankston, Sparksfly inventor and CEO. A 20-year pioneer in the creation and deployment of successful social technologies for Fortune 1000 companies, he co-founded an enterprise social software firm alongside his Naples business partner, Kim Kobza, Sparksfly co-founder and COO. The dynamic duo went on to co-patent the “Platform for Management of Internet Public Comment” software (Patent# US 7,548,930 B2) that is used in hundreds of governmental agencies, cities, and counties today, including the Department of Defense, and as the technology base behind the American Express OPEN Forum and HGTV’s Rate my Space.

At the heart of Sparksfly, David’s new creation, is a proprietary fuzzy inference engine that interprets your social feeds to determine your personal behaviors. Sparksfly then learns your routines . . . similar to how Pandora learns your music preferences. The more you use the app, the better it gets at recognizing and showing you content from your feeds that best suits your personal patterns.

But here’s the industry game- changer: the built-in “Sparks Detector” cuts through the clutter of your multiple social media accounts to discover content and contacts you didn’t know existed! By uncovering these valuable “sparks,” Sparksfly improves your productivity by aggregating your personal social media into trails you can actually follow.

In just fourteen weeks, Sparksfly has amassed more than 100,000 users, 90 million card flips, and an above-average rating of 4.3 in the Google PlayStore. Sparksfly has been touted as an intelligent, personal discovery mobile application and next-generation aggregation tool that helps users focus.

Check out www.sparksfly.com to see why it’s been dubbed the next darling of Naples tech. Download the app today—available in either the Apple iOS or GooglePlay stores—to simplify your social. And try it out on Android Wear devices, too!