Emerging Technologies Blog: Introducing Bmpur: a Social network for discovering and sharing new music

Bumper is a social network for discovering and sharing new music.

Bmpur combines the sharing and trending aspect of reddit and infuses it with the social networking aspect of twitter. We give our users freedom to share anything music related with an entire community, whether it's their own music, a cool article, or just a great song they found online. If the community enjoys what you posted, they can bump it up to the front page and get it trending.

bmpur doesn't have categories. Instead, we build feeds for our users depending on who they're following, what content those users re-post to their followers, and how these users interact with the site.

We believe in providing a platform for people to freely promote themselves, discover something new, and share what they find interesting – all for free.

Company Overview

bmpur was unknowingly conceptualized a few years ago by two fraternity roommates at Georgia Tech. At the time, Giovanni, current co-founder and CEO, and his roommate Marius, ran a small video website and wanted to create a way for users to share funny videos.Soon after they began developing, they realized this update to their current simplistic website would be a massive undertaking.Instead, despite their lack of coding knowledge,they decided to pursue a completely new platform that would allow users to share much more than just videos—news, music, photos, and more.

The two began learning how to code, how servers worked, how to market a website, and how to create an intuitive user interface. It was a very slow process and they knew they needed help. After a month or two, fall of 2011, Giovanni approached a long time internet-friend about the new website. Misha, current co-founder, ran a successful music blog at the time and suggested they narrow down their specific niche towards the music industry.

Misha had valuable expertise in the music industry and was actively trying to figure out how to develop a place where up and coming artists, blogs, and labels could find an online home and instantly gain popularity. After much discussion, the team conceived bmpur – the act of “bumping” a post towards popularity.

After many months of struggling towards their seemingly impossible goal, it became evident they would never finish. Giovanni and Marius’s friendship began to tear apart, progress slowed considerably for a few months, and then altogether halted when Giovanni left to study abroad in Italy and Marius graduated.

About a year after parting ways, Giovanni and Misha reconnected and decided to revisit their original concept. With a clearer vision, maturity, and newfound determination, the two decided to brave a full hearted effort towards launching what they believed would be the next big thing, something that would fill a much-needed void in the music industry.

Focused and ready to chase a dream, the two began searching for a coder to develop their platform. They came across a talented back end developer, Adam, and hoped to have a working platform in a few short months—a huge underestimate. After nine months of working 16+ hours a day, in addition to full time jobs and school, they were still nowhere near completion. Adam eventually left bmpur for a full time position at another company, forcing Giovanni and Misha to set out once again to find a new developer.

Luckily, within weeks of Adam’s departure, Aaron joined the team. Aaron was an extremely talented developer and entrepreneur, who ran his own music blog. They were now in a position to launch bmpur, but with the amount of development that remained incomplete and their entry to market window closing quickly, they knew it would not be easy.

The team began pumping out new ways to share, new ways to discover, and new ways to reach fans and followers as fast as possible. After months of hard work, sleepless nights, and countless expenses, they managed to pull it off. Since its beta launch earlier this year, bmpur has become a thriving social network for music lovers, artists, and industry professionals.

The bmpur team is currently composed of co-founders Giovanni and Misha, senior developer Aaron, a graphic designer, and three interns. Misha and Aaron continue to run their music blogs and Marius and Giovanni are great friends again and actively share music with each other on bmpur.

Founders