FORBES - The privacy-focused social networking company MeWe is looking to change its reputation from being a hub for right-wing extremist groups to a trusted Facebook alternative that people have heard of. The company has raised $27M in a Series A round. CEO Jeffrey Edell is aiming to reach a much broader audience by focusing on MeWe's firm stance on privacy and tightening content moderation rules by hiring more staff for its content moderation team.
10 posts categorized "MeWe"
Facebook Alternative MeWe Raises $27M to Help It Become a Household Name
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MeWe, a Privacy-first Social Network, Adds Tech Titans to Advisors and Board of Directors
PR NEWSWIRE - Under the new leadership of media executive Jeffrey Edell as Chairman and CEO of MeWe (a 20M-member, privacy-first social network), the company is expanding its Advisory Board to include the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, and its Board of Directors to include the co-founder of Harvard Connection which paved the way to Facebook, Divya Narendra. MeWe's advisors already included tech royalty, such as the father of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
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MeWe Looks to Raise Money to Fuel Expansion
AXIOS - July 14 - MeWe, a privacy-focused subscription-based social media platform, is looking to raise two new cash rounds to help fuel its growth, its founder and chief evangelist, Mark Weinstein said. It hopes to raise this year between $10M and $30M, Weinstein said. MeWe has raised $23M to date from an array of high-net-worth funders.
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Anti-Facebook MeWe Continues Its User Growth Surge
ZDNET - Apr 30 - MeWe increases its user base as people turn away from ad-riddled social media platforms. MeWe says it does not control users' newsfeed or fill their feed with third-party ads or content and has grown almost 18M members. The platform has raised ~$23M from high-net-worth investors. MeWe's membership grew by 36% in Q1 2021 and by an average of 173% per year for the last 3 years. 50% of its traffic is outside of North America. MeWe is available in 20 languages and was recently the #1 downloaded social app in Hong Kong.
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MeWe Appoints Jeffrey Edell as New CEO
PR NEWSWIRE - Apr 14 - MeWe, the ad-free social network with data privacy and no newsfeed manipulation, announces that Jeffrey Edell has been appointed the company's new CEO and joins its Board of Directors. Edell succeeds MeWe founder Mark Weinstein whose new role is Chief Evangelist. An experienced private and public company leader in the tech and entertainment industries, Edell has previously held Chairman, CEO, and other C-level roles at Intermix Media, the parent of MySpace; Soundelux Entertainment Group/Liberty Media; Cinedigmand DIC Entertainment. Edell is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (Oscars), the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmys), and the Producers Guild of America (PGA). He is also a CPA from KPMG.
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'Anti-Facebook' MeWe Social Network Adds 2.5M New Members in One Week
ZDNET - Jan 20 - MeWe, a privacy-first "anti-Facebook" platform, added 2.5M new members in a week since Facebook and Twitter users are getting fed up with relentless privacy violations, surveillance capitalism, political bias, targeting, and newsfeed manipulation by these companies. MeWe touted to be the ad-free future of social networking, is currently the No. 1 downloaded social app in the Google Play Store, and the No. 3 downloaded app out of all apps in the store. Since launching in 2016, it surged to 9M users in October 2020, doubling its membership during each of the last 3 years. The platform is currently sitting at 15.5M members - 50% of whom are outside of North America.
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Following Riots, Alternative Social Apps & Private Messengers Top the App Stores
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 12 - Alternative social media apps including MeWe, CloutHub and other privacy-focused rivals to big tech, are topping the app stores following Trump's ban from mainstream social platforms like Facebook and Twitter and the more recent removal of conservative social app Parler from both the App Store and Google Play. In the days since the Parler ban, "free speech"-favoring social networks are seeing notable numbers of new downloads at a quick pace, data shows. Next-generation social network MeWe has been downloaded nearly 200k times worldwide and ranked No. 7 in the U.S. App Store's Top Overall free charts. CloutHub which claims to be a social network for "social, civic, and political networking" with a free speech angle, has seen just 31k installs since Wednesday and now ranks No. 11 on the US App Store. Two other apps that have moved into the top charts are cases of mistaken identity. An app called "Parlor" is being mistaken for the now-banned "Parler" app. From Wednesday through Sunday, "Parlor" became the No. 4 Top App Overall on iOS in the US. Meanwhile, an app called "Gab News" is also gaining ground because it's mistaken for the long since banned app "Gab," which ex-Parler users are suggesting as an alternative. "Gab News," however, is currently ranking No. 44 on the App Store's Top Free Apps Chart in the U.S. Then there is Rumble, a conservative alternative to YouTube. The app has also climbed to No. 78 on the U.S. App Store since Wednesday.
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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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Facebook and Twitter Alternatives That Are More Free Speech Friendly
RECLAIMTHENET - July 15 - These alternatives have many of the features of Facebook and Twitter but don't silence their users under broad, far-reaching rules.
Gab - Free speech social network Gab launched in August 2016 as a private beta and opened up registrations to the public in May 2017. Gab states that "any user's political speech that is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S". Constitution will be allowed on the site. Gab gets 4.5M visits per month, according to SimilarWeb.
Minds - a free speech social network with a blockchain-based rewards system that was founded in February 2011, launched in alpha in 2012, and launched to the public in June 2015. According to SimilarWeb, it gets ~1.2M visits per month.
Parler - was founded in August 2018 and has already passed 1.5M users, according to its CEO John Matze, and receives 5.3M monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb. Parler's focus is on unbiased algorithms and free expression with its content moderation based on the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Supreme Court decisions.
MeWe - a social network that focuses heavily on privacy and promises that there are no ads or spyware on the platform. It was founded in 2012 and launched publicly in 2016.
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MeWe CEO Mark Weinstein Explains His Platform Plans to Be More Private
RAPPLER - July 14 - Weinstein discusses how his platform intends to be different from Facebook and other major social media platforms. MeWe is the self-branded "Anti-Facebook" social networking site that's built on what they say is a core value of protecting users' privacy. "When I saw Mark Zuckerberg say that privacy was a social norm of the past, I was like, 'That's the craziest statement I ever heard,'" said MeWe CEO and privacy advocate Mark Weinstein, referring to a quote by Zuckerberg in 2010. MeWe, which launched in 2016, touts itself as a privacy-focused Facebook alternative. MeWe promises to never access users' data, nor sell it to any third-party firm. The site also doesn't run any ads. MeWe has a "freemium" revenue model. Some of its features such as digital sticker packs, unlimited voice and video calls, extra cloud storage, and dark mode are locked behind a paywall. MeWe is reportedly heading towards 10M users within the year, and Weinstein said they're growing rapidly in different regions across the world, including the Philippines. "Our traffic is ~34% in Asia, ~29% in Europe, ~3% in Australia and New Zealand, and the rest is in North America."
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