Mei Introduces a Credit System That Will Value Data & Intelligence
In our latest release, Mei introduces a credit system that will track the data and intelligence exchanged in our app.
How Does It Work?
Generally, users earn credits when they share their data, opinions or knowledge. Examples of this include responding to Mei’s questions or labeling messages. Users will use credits to request data and intelligence, for example, to understand a contact’s personality.
While Mei is in beta testing, intelligence features will cost significantly fewer credits and more credits will be rewarded for sharing data than after we’re fully launched. This is our way of thanking early adopters for helping us test and improve our app.
As our platform scales and gets more sophisticated, the costs and rewards for information exchanged will be calibrated to better reflect the value of data (e.g. how much does it improve our models), the cost of our services (e.g. research and computational resources), and how much value our services bring to users and others. So as we build out features, credits may become more valuable in terms of what they could be exchanged for.
Mei doesn’t charge credits for texting, so users can chat away! In fact, users can earn credits for simply texting because that increases the data we can learn from.
If a user deletes their account from our system and returns at a later date, their credits will be lost and any new credits awarded may be significantly reduced. We do this to prevent anyone from abusing our system by repeatedly deleting and re-creating accounts.
How Do I Start Sharing and Earning Credits?
If a user chooses to turn the Mei AI assistant feature on, our system creates a user account and the app shares the SMS/MMS messages and call logs on the user’s phone with our systems. Since our app doesn’t ask for personally identifiable information such as users’ name, we don’t know the identity of each user. The user account is then awarded sign-up credits (beta testers earn an extra bonus) and credits based on the number of messages shared. Interactions with the Mei AI assistant will also earn credits.
What If I Don’t Want to Share My Data?
Choice and transparency are behind everything we do. We believe that when users share their data, they should be incentivized to do so, not coerced.
Our app default is to not collect any user data other than is necessary for sending/receiving messages. If a user chooses not to login to our systems, we don’t collect any data and our app simply acts as an upgrade to the stock texting apps that come with most phones.
For more information about Mei, check out our website or try the app yourself.
