CNBCTV18 - InMobi Group's homegrown video-sharing social networking platform Roposo recently hit the 100M user-mark on the Google Play store. It is currently available in 12 Indian languages and claims to clock in over 2B video views every day. Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi Group talked about this milestone.
Video-Sharing Roposo Crosses 100M Users
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Nextdoor to Eye IPO at $5 Billion Valuation
BLOOMBERG - Oct 19 - Nextdoor, a social network for neighbors sharing information or trading goods and services, is considering options to go public. The company is targeting a valuation in the range of $4B - $5B. Nextdoor has raised ~$470M, and was last valued at $2.2B after a funding round in Sep 2019.
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TikTok Pledges to Invest in Pakistan if PTA Reopens the App
PAKISTAN TODAY - Oct 19 - A spokesperson from TikTok has shared that if the Government of Pakistan decides to reopen access to its services, TikTok will certainly assess the allocation of resources to the Pakistan market. TikTok was blocked on the 9th of October 2020. As reported by Profit, TikTok has 25M downloads in Pakistan of which 68% are female and 96% are Android users.
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Spoxio - First Sports Social Platform, Scouting App
THE GUARDIAN - Oct 19 - Spoxio is a new social network, specifically designed to provide sport men/women, fans, sport enthusiasts, clubs and scouts, as a place to network and collaborate globally and professionally in the sporting world. The app works like any other social networks but users can also post ads on Spoxio.
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Australia Now Has 2.5M TikTok Users
BUSINESS INSIDER - Oct 16 - Australian TikTok user base has grown by a million to reach 2.5M users as of June this year. 70% of all Australian users are born after 1991, and ~1.5M Australian TikTok users are women. The highest rate of usage is for 'tweens' aged 10-13 years old, followed by teens aged 14-17 years old.
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Privacy-first Facebook Alternative MeWe Surges to 9M Users
ZDNET - Oct 16 - Millions of people have been ditching Facebook and switching to MeWe, touted to be the ad-free future of social networking. Advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web), MeWe has surged to 9M users worldwide since its inception in 2013. MeWe has a Privacy Bill of Rights giving its users total control of their data and privacy. There are no ads, no targeting, no facial recognition, no data mining, and no newsfeed manipulation. It has features such as: newsfeeds for friends, pages, private 1:1 and group chats, private and open groups, disappearing content, stories, a custom camera with GIF creation, live voice and video, voice messaging, personal cloud storage, custom group profiles, dual-camera and MeWe Journals. MeWe was named a 2020 Most Innovative Social Media Company by Fast Company, a 2019 Best Entrepreneurial Company in America by Entrepreneur Magazine, and Start-Up of the Year Finalist at SXSW. The company has a "Freemium" revenue model that gives users the basic social media experience for free, and offers optional enhancements they can purchase - extra storage ($3.99 per month), live voice and video calling ($1.99 per month), and MeWe journals ($1.99 per month).
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TikTok to Assure Advertisers of Brand Safety as Scrutiny Persists
MOBILE MARKETER - Oct 16 - TikTok partnered with OpenSlate, the provider of content ratings for digital platforms, to offer a third-party verified brand safety solution to advertisers. TikTok will use OpenSlate's ratings to ensure and confirm that ads appear in a brand-safe setting. OpenSlate continually measures and scores ~750M videos that appear on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. Brands use OpenSlate's analysis to evaluate content quality, safety, suitability and subject matter before making decisions about ad placements. OpenSlate's content ratings are available in 50 markets worldwide.
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Nextdoor's Focus on Kindness
FAST COMPANY - Oct 15 - Nextdoor was founded in 2010 by 7 friends, most who'd worked at Shopping.com. Before the pandemic, Nextdoor was known for its role in racial profiling and over-policing. Soon after the company announced a funding round in 2015 that valued it at ~$1B, an article reported that black residents walking in neighborhoods were often photographed and posted on the site as suspicious. Sarah Friar, Nextdoor's CEO from 12/18, tried to outrun Nextdoor's reputation and transform the company into a mktg channel for local businesses. Nextdoor released a Help Map for neighbors to post lists of what they needed (during covid) so others could fulfill them. They saw an 80% monthly surge in DAU. In 9/19, Nextdoor introduced Kindness Reminder, which checks to see if a user's post has words in it that in the past tended to be flagged as abusive, and then asks them to rephrase before it's uploaded and got a 30% reduction in reported content. The company is not yet profitable.
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SoFi Launches Social Network for Investors
AMERICAN BANKER - Oct 15 - Social Finance (SoFi), an American online personal finance company, is launching a social network for investors. Based in San Francisco, SoFi provides student loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, investing and banking. SoFi has a million members; half of those use SoFi Invest. The number of brokerage accounts has grown by 257% since Jan 1. In a recent survey, 70% of SoFi Invest clients said they discuss their investments at least weekly with colleagues, peers and family members. SoFi already has a Facebook group with 50K members.
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TikTok Rival Triller Weighs Going Public
AFP - Oct 14 - Triller, an app similar to TikTok that allows users to share short video clips, is in talks with several companies about a possible merger that would allow them to go public. Triller, launched in 2015, says it currently has 65M monthly users around the world.
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Teens Under 14 Are Prime Targets for Scammers on TikTok
NBC12 - Oct 13 - A research done by cyber-security firm Tenable found a third of TikTok users are under the age of 15. Some scammers try to get young users to do silly or suggestive and inappropriate things with the lure of getting paid. Many of them entice users with the promise of easy money in some kind of pyramid scheme.
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BetSperts Raises Another $1M
CHICAGO INNO - Oct 13 - BetSperts, a Chicago startup that creates a social media platform for sports bettors, has raised ~$1M in a fresh round of funding. The company will use the new funding to accelerate growth. BetSperts, founded in 2019, is a social network for sports gamblers who want to find experts who can help guide their bets. Users log their picks on BetSperts after making their bet, and the startup tracks and ranks gamblers based on their betting history.
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Social Networking App Tubbr Raises Fresh Capital
PRESS RELEASE - Oct 13 - Tubbr has successfully raised an undisclosed amount from Global Ascent Partners, International Growth Consulting & VC fund. The funds will be used to support the launch of Tubbr Beta in January 2021. It is an invite-only personal social network. The app will let people earn money through live-streaming sessions.
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Kalaro Is a Social Network for Gamers
ABS-CBN NEWS - Oct 13 - The-AsiaGroup.com, a Philippine-based tech firm, is launching a social network for gamers that includes a tournament hub and an e-wallet for digital payments. The company is inviting beta testers to try out Kalaro. The platform allows gamers to meet other gamers, discuss the latest trends in gaming, get updates about the upcoming events and tournaments, watch their favorite livestreamers, and interact with them in real-time.
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Telepath - the Social Network Taking Aim at Abuse
TECH CRUNCH - Oct 12 - Modern social networks are filled with hate speech and abuse. A new social network Telepath focuses on enforcing kindness, countering abuse, and disabling the spread of fake news. No social network to date has been able to accomplish what Telegraph claims it will be able to do in terms of content moderation. Its ambitions are optimistic and, as the network remains in private beta, they're also untested at scale. Telepath, at first glance, looks very much like just another feed to scroll through. It was founded by former Quora employees, including Marc Bodnick, now Telepath Executive Chairman; and Richard Henry, now Telepath CEO. It's backed by a couple million in seed funding. To get started on Telepath, users join with their mobile phone number and name, join interest-based communities, find and follow other users. Everything on Telepath disappears after 30 days. Users must agree to "be kind". Fake news is banned. Telepath says it will sacrifice growth and hire moderators who work in-house. For now, Telepath remains in a closed beta of indefinite length. People need an invite to join.
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