This ex-Googler wants to fix social media and make you a viral Facebook and Twitter superstar

In 2008, Bindu Reddy left her job as product lead on Google Apps - she was involved in the earliest planning stages of the search giant's ill-fated social networks, Google Buzz and Google+, but saw the writing on the wall.

"It was clear that Google was not evolving to be a social company," Reddy told Business Insider.

That was a problem for Reddy, who sees social media as a crucial mechanism for anyone, anywhere to have a voice. That's especially true during these politically turbulent times, she said, when social media is enabling people to speak up for what they believe in. Not to mention, having a personal brand can increase career opportunities.

The problem, as Reddy sees it, is that in its current form, social media can be overwhelming for anybody who's not a millennial power user. Given the ultimate power to say anything, people often find themselves speechless.

"For normal human beings, social media is always sort of difficult," said Reddy. But at the same time, "if you're not active, you'll get laughed at."

That's why, on Thursday, Reddy launched her new venture, Post Intelligence: A free artificial intelligence-powered personal assistant for social media, designed to turn anybody from zero to hero on Facebook (with Facebook Pages support to start) and Twitter, with more social network support likely coming down the line.

Social pivot

Post Intelligence is actually one of those famous Silicon Valley pivots: Back in 2010, Reddy and her team launched MyLikes, a platform for helping social media influencers and sponsored content publishers team up. That product gets rolled into Post Intelligence, and taken a step further.

Right off the top, Post Intelligence has some key features to help your posts do better: It can suggest times for your social media post to go up to be seen by the most people, as well as give it a score of how well it's likely to perform with your followers.

But Bindu says that there's a more existential problem that Post Intelligence is working to solve: "What do you want to expose to your friends?"

Everybody wants to establish themselves as an expert, or at least as someone with something insightful to say. The problem is that there's always too much going on in the world to even know where to start. That's why Post Intelligence also prompts you with news articles and tweets that are relevant to your interests - basically, things that act as conversation starters.

Combine the two, Reddy says, and you have a set of tools for establishing yourself as an expert in front of a broad audience. In the future, Reddy says, she sees Post Intelligence getting smarter, with better prompts and additional suggestions on how to make yourself into a viral social media superstar.

"There are things that people can do easily, but AI lets them go further and faster," Reddy says.

As for the business model, Post Intelligence is totally free: It uses some of that MyLikes pedigree to connect you with producers of sponsored posts, so once you have your audience, you can become a brand influencer, Kim Kardashian-style. And Post Intelligence takes a cut.

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