What if a social network launched without all the reshares, likes, plus ones, or upvotes? You could enjoy the content in a pure sense, without having to worry about reciprocating or recycling. That’s the idea behind Potluck, a new social network from Branch, which recently launched.

Quite simply, to participate through the network one just needs to share links to interesting content. The user interface is separated into two windows or tabs if you will, one for the news feed and the other for the related content. It looks almost like a news reader instead of a social network.

The news feed won’t list who shared the content either, so you don’t have to worry about people linking content directly to your profile. All that shows in the feed is the title and content from the related link, along with how many other users commented on the post. In fact, the comments are really the only social part of the platform aside from the link sharing.

Potluck takes the performance out of sharing by making it more personal and less stressful. On most social networks, you’re under constant pressure to live up to expectations. Double-digit likes, original witticisms, breathtaking images.

On Potluck, we reduced this anxiety by taking the emphasis off of individual people and placing it on the common interests that bring them together. In your Friend Activity feed, the default view, you’ll notice that items don’t tell you who shared them — there are no names and no avatars. Instead, you see the topic or name of the link and the number of your friends who are talking about it. It’s not until you click on one that you discover who else is there. So go ahead and share that article about a quirky interest or guilty-pleasure song — the only people who will know it was you are the ones who are interested enough to click through.

It’s essentially a forum where you can share content and news with friends, family or everyone else. To streamline the whole sharing process, the developers only included a single share function which allows you to paste a web URL or link. Users can then post comments on the shared content, to stir up a discussion on the matter. It certainly looks interesting, take a look!

An iOS app is planned for the near future, but there’s no mention of an Android version. Right now, Potluck is only accessible via the web portal so you can only use it from a browser.

Potluck is now active, and new users are free to sign up as they wish. Personally, I’ve already signed up to use the service and I’ve been testing the waters.

How many of you would be interested in using a similar social network?

[via Mashable]