MeWe
MeWe is a global social media and social networking service. As a company based in Los Angeles, California it is also known as Sgrouples, Inc., doing business as MeWe. The site has been described as a Facebook alternative due to its focus on data privacy.[2][3][4][5][6]
Type of business
May 16, 2012 (as Sgrouples)
Worldwide
Mark Weinstein, Jonathan Wolfe
MeWe; MeWePro
In 2022, MeWe announced it will migrate its platform over time to a Web3, blockchain-based web infrastructure, becoming the first major social network to migrate its tech over to the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will make it the largest decentralized social media platform.[3]
Platform
Features
In March 2020, MeWe launched dual-camera videos, which allow for both inward ("selfie") and outward-facing camera views.[7] MeWe also touts its "Privacy Bill of Rights" as the primary differentiator between it and Facebook.[8]
By 2015, as MeWe neared the end of its beta testing cycle, the press called MeWe's software "not dissimilar to Facebook".[6] In 2020, Mashable described MeWe as replicating Facebook's features.[4]
The MeWe site and application has features common to most social media and social networking sites: users can post text and images to a feed, react to others' posts using emoji, post animated GIFs, create specialized groups, post disappearing content, and chat.[9]
Online chat may occur between two or more people or among members of a group.[9] Person-to-person online chat is similar to that in most other social media and social networking sites, and supports text, video calling, and voice calling.[10] No longer a product offering, "Secret Chat" is limited to the paid subscription tier of MeWe,[11] and uses double ratchet encryption to ensure that chats are private and not visible even to MeWe employees.[9]
MeWe reported in June 2018 that the site had 90,000 active groups, 60,000 of which were "public" and open to all users.[11] Following the influx of Hong Kong users in 2020, MeWe's former CEO, Mark Weinstein,[12] announced that the website would provide a Traditional Chinese language version by the end of the year.[13]
Reception
In a 2015 review of the beta MeWe service, British writer John Leonard called MeWe "well-designed and pretty intuitive", but questioned whether the company's business model was a viable one.[6] Andrew Orr, reviewing the site in April 2018, felt that service was a good one but that it did not have any advantages over existing social media sites. That, he felt, would make it difficult for MeWe to attract users.[10] In late 2020, the site also gained popularity in Hong Kong due to concerns surrounding possible pro-China censorship of Facebook.[27] MeWe takes a relatively light approach to content moderation according to some sources.[4][14][19]
In 2022, MeWe announced it will migrate its platform over time to a Web3, blockchain-based web infrastructure using Project Liberty's DSNP and Frequency protocol, which will run on the Polkadot Blockchain Network, and make MeWe the largest decentralized social media platform.[3]
Business
The MeWe business model does not rely on advertising revenue; rather, MeWe generates revenue from MeWe Premium subscriptions and from users purchasing premium enhancements a-la-carte such as a live voice / live video calling, extra storage, custom emojis, and custom themes.[9][10][30]
MeWe emphasizes its commitment to privacy and remaining ad-free.[4][11] MeWe has said they will never use cookies or spyware to generate content about users, and that it will not track user activity in any way or sell user data to a third party.[6][9] MeWe has described itself as the "anti-Facebook" due to its focus on data privacy, lack of moderation, and simple newsfeed algorithm.[5] MeWe had 20 million registered users.[31]
Advisors to MeWe include computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, SumZero CEO and co-founder of HarvardConnection Divya Narendra, and filmmaker Cullen Hoback.[32][33][34]
In 1998, entrepreneur Mark Weinstein and Jonathan Wolfe[35] established SuperGroups.com, a social media website. The site was closed by its largest investor in 2001.[36] Gathering largely the same leadership team, Weinstein incorporated Sgrouples Inc. in 2011.[4][36][37] MeWe was incorporated as a subsidiary of Sgrouples,[37] and based in Culver City, California.[11] Over the next six years, Sgrouples raised about $10 million from investors including lynda.com founder Lynda Weinman, fashion designer Rachel Roy, and authors Jack Canfield and Marci Shimoff.[9][11]
MeWe finished its initial financing round in July 2018 by raising $5.2 million in new funds.[9][11] The company began work on upgrading MeWe and initiating work on an enterprise version called MeWePRO.[9]
In December 2019, MeWe launched "MeWe Premium", an optional $4.99 per month subscription that gives users a bundle of enhancements including: live voice / live video calling; unlimited custom themes; unlimited custom emojis and stickers; video journals for stories; 100GB of MeWe Cloud Storage; and more.[9][30][38]
In September 2022, CEO & Chairman Jeffrey Scott Edell of MeWe announced that it had raised $27 million in a Series A round led by private company McCourt Global, which contributed $15 million. Existing investors contributed another $12 million—this round values MeWe at approximately $200 million. Mark Weinstein was a founder of MeWe and its CEO until April 2021. Jeffrey Scott Edell became the company's CEO and was named as Chairman in 2022.[12][30]