by Dave Mainella 

“Wouldn’t it be better if public restrooms had a rating, like on Yelp?”  Such a simply universal idea would certainly help with the dilemma of an overfull bladder.  And such is the concept of Betterfic: part suggestion box and part social network.  This self-proclaimed community of innovators, currently in Beta, offers the opportunity to share ideas and solutions to everyday inconveniences.

Betterific is the brainchild of Micha Weinblatt, Jonathan Schillit, and Brad Cater, who collectively came to the realization that it would be better if fitted sheets had indicators for length and width.  The threesome decided to create a forum where like-minded smart and creative people could share similar ideas and suggestions – where people could talk about how to rectify life’s little inconveniences, fitted sheets or otherwise.

After joining Betterific through Facebook, Twitter, or an email address, a user creates a basic profile (picture optional) and is presented with the sortable newsfeed of “betterifs”.  Users can sort by category, popularity, time, and the editor’s picks.  Features include a reddit-esque up-and-down voting system and a comments area.  Betterific also offers suggestions of trending topics and people to follow.

A “brainstorm of the day” box in the top-right corner of the home page seems to be sponsored by companies like Google, Saxbys Coffee, and USA Today.  Questions like “How can we make Gmail better?”, or “What section of USA Today do you read first?” apparently offer Betterific the opportunity to involve outside brands with a customer base of creative and willing thinkers.  For a website free of advertisements, incorporating brands into the “betterif” process seems to make smart business sense.

So far, Betterific has only limited ingenuity regarding music.  Suggestions like, “Wouldn’t it be better if Pandora had an alarm clock feature?” indicate that the ideas are out there.

And for you thinkers, be aware that, as outlined in Betterific’s Terms of Service agreement, all submitted ideas are dedicated to the public domain.  So consider keeping that million-dollar idea to yourself.

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