More like this, please!

OK, disclaimer first: I work for Squawkin Inc., the company that not long ago launched the new social communication app, Squawkin for iOS and Android. This post is going to talk about Squawkin in light of a few of the really good insights in “A Teenager’s View on Social Media.”

Now that that’s out of the way… This post was a great read and had me nodding my head at a bunch of points.

I think one of the most important points in the post is the recognition of the difference between online content that’s associated with a person’s social identity and that which isn’t. It’s a mega-important and fateful choice for a lot of users, especially for anyone who cares what their family and potential employers, etc., think of them (which is most of us). What you post under that profile will follow you around pretty much forever, so you have to make a critical choice and you have to choose which platforms you use and how you use them based on that choice.

But what if users weren’t forced to make that choice? What if they could have it both ways on one platform? What no online social media has done (very well, anyway) to this point is give users the ability to post publicly to large audiences without forcing the choice between a public or private identity.

Fair warning: Now I’m going to tell you about what Squawkin does and how it’s relevant to this post… Through its feature called crowds, which are unlimited public audiences, the Squawkin app lets the same user, with the same username and profile, keep their personal details (including their name, phone number and other identifying info) private if they choose, while being as public as they want in their posts to crowds. Users can do this while keeping their private communication with friends and with groups totally out of public view. All on the same platform, in the same app.

Want to hear from new people, make new friends? Done — just create a profile that’s visible and contains all the awesome/goofy/quirky stuff about you that you want people to know. Want to keep it close to the vest and only let your existing friends (or no one at all) know what you’re all about? Make your profile private (visible to no one) or semi-private (only visible to friends). Either way you can still post to your crowds, basically large public audiences (other platforms call them followings, but you don’t only follow crowds on Squawkin — you can actually enable crowds Squawks and give your followers a voice if you want more of a community experience on a certain topic).

Also, the original post makes the important point about hearing from people you want to hear from. Since Squawkin users can create multiple crowds based on their interests — try that on Twitter or Instagram—can’t be done—you’re always communicating to people who want to hear what you have to say, and vice versa. I follow people on Twitter whose perspectives on news and sports I love, but that doesn’t mean I want to see pictures of what their cat had for lunch. On Squawkin, those users can have a crowd for what’s happening with their college basketball team and another for their fluffy’s mealtime adventures — and I’ll follow either or both as I like. Later, spam. And since you can combine audiences anyway you like on Squawkin, you can reach one person, every person, or anything in between each time you send a “Squawk” (which is a custom combination of live audio, photos, text plus interactive location info that, when deleted by the sender, is positively scrubbed from every device and from our servers).

Anyway, thought I’d chime in given that this post makes some really great points about social media, no matter how old the user is, but it’s really young, savvy users who are driving the future not only of social media but of technology more broadly. We need more young voices telling the world what they want rather than having their wants and needs dictated to them based on assumptions from people who want to sell them stuff.

That’s what we’re about at Squawkin. We listen to our users. We don’t sell or share user info. Our app is a free, but ad-free experience. Check us out at www.squawkin.com if you’re interested.

And either way, please keep writing great stuff like this!