The Newest Social Media Network
In the past couple of years, social media networks have taken a hit due to privacy concerns. What people didn’t grasp when they signed up for these “free” services is that they have to get paid for in some way and that’s why they collect as much of our data as they can–so they can sell it. Facebook, in particular, was hit with many privacy concerns. Enter MeWe.
Launched in 2016, MeWe is a private social network that wants to take on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. There are no ads — targeted or otherwise — and no tracking users of any kind, such as data mining.
MeWe has most of the standard features you would see on any other social media site. You can join groups, post pictures and comments to your home feed, and comment on other people’s posts. In addition, anyone can create a MeWe group and can opt to have it in their group directory as well.
When it comes to chat, again it’s pretty much the same as other chat apps. You can video call, voice call, send regular chats and secret chats. Secret chats are end-to-end encrypted, and although it’s an in-app subscription, you can try it free for 30 days.
That’s how MeWe plans to stay in business. Since it doesn’t sell access to its users to advertisers, there is a MeWe Store with emojis and the secret chat feature. Presumably more content will be added over time. Getting secret chat is a subscription costing US$0.99 per month or US$5.99 per year. Other than that the app is free.
MeWe is an interesting concept, but it reminds me of the early days of LinkedIn. There are not a lot of users and the features are still fairly immature. I believe it definitely has a decent future, but they must include more robust features. I enjoy using MeWe, but I tend to forget all about it when I am not using it. I will go on and respond to some things and later I completely forget that I have a MeWe account. This is due to the lack of compelling features. I will continue to dabble with MeWe in the hope it gets better.
Originally published at webscientists.net on August 23, 2018.
