153 | MeWe: The Rapidly Growing, High Integrity Alternative to Facebook with Mark Weinstein
Our guest today on the pod is Mark Weinstein. Mark is the founder and CEO of MeWe, the #1 trending, award-winning disruptive next-gen social network challenging Facebook. MeWe has No Ads, no Fake News, No Political Bias, No Shadow Banning, No Personal Data Tracking, No Newsfeed Manipulation, No Facial Recognition and No BS. Instead, it has the features people love and gives members total control with it's "Privacy Bill of Rights".
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Mark Weinstein Awarepreneurs interview
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Mark Weinstein
Paul Zelizer 00:03
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer and welcome to another episode of The aware printers podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce our guests and our topic today, I'd like to ask you one thing if you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to the show on and do a rating and review it helps tremendously. Today I'm thrilled to introduce you to mark Weinstein and our topic is me we a rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook. Mark is the founder and CEO of MIUI. The number one trending award winning disruptive next gen social network challenging Facebook means he has no ads. No fake news. No political bias, no shadow banning no personal data tracking, no news feed mullet manipulation, no facial recognition and no BS. Instead, it has the features people love. And it gives members total control with its privacy Bill of Rights. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Weinstein 01:17
Thank you, Paul. Great to be here. Great to be talking to a fellow New Mexican, although, sadly, I had to leave New Mexico in 2011 when I decided to start to enquire about how to build a disruptive social network that can fix all the problems and restore social networking to what it is supposed to be in what it was envisioned and what it was invented for, which was for all of us, to communicate together to stay in touch, to use technology to you know, enhance our relationships and expand our awareness to Together wherever we are in the world and you know, expand the love between us and the friendship between us in the camaraderie and that was the idea of community portals, staying in touch with people we know we love and making new friends and exploring new interests. It has unfortunately digressed with the mainstream social media companies that are popular today in 2020, into something that is known as surveillance capitalism. Paul, it's great to be on your show.
Paul Zelizer 02:28
Well, everything you just talked about are things we spent a lot of time talking about in the aware printers community. In fact, we're just coming out of a boycott of Facebook. I'm sure we'll get into that right. Stop paper profit is the hashtag. And we had a lot of conversation about that. In the aware printers community that was in July of 2020. This episode's being recorded in early August. This is a very timely topic and we're thrilled to have you here. Before we get into why me we and some of the problems of Facebook you know what the heck Surveillance capitalism, and what may we does differently. We are called to wear printers mark and one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask about a wellness or an awareness practice that you personally use to bring your most resilient self to Work Day after day.
Mark Weinstein 03:18
You know, Paul, there's so many. And you know, for our listeners, I also had a coaching company, I've written a book series on greatness called habitually great, you can still find them on Amazon and endorsed by Dr. Stephen Covey, which is really like a peak moment for me when Dr. Covey gave me his beautiful endorsement of my work. And we are habitual as human beings. Absolutely. And we're habitual about how we brush our teeth. Even how we blink our eyes, how we turn our heads how we do everything. And we're also habitual, about our emotional patterns. Whether we are critical seeing what's wrong, or we're perfectionist or you know, We are oriented towards towards failure. You know, we are absolutely habitual in our emotional patterns. So something very simple that I like to start with every day is something I learned from my father. And it's really just elemental. It's not even it's not about me or my books. But my dad taught me that every day is a beautiful day. And every day is an opportunity, no matter what challenges that I'm facing, or you're facing or that we're facing collectively, as a community. Every day is a beautiful day, it's an opportunity. And the key is to see ourselves through the day. Don't don't get hung up on what was me, which is also a habit by the way people like to suffer. Suffering is a habit. But have a breakthrough and wake up in the morning and look out whether it's raining or snowing or sunny or whatever the conditions were alive. It's a beautiful day. It's great to be alive as we know life is finite. And no matter what our emotional circuitry Chances are no matter what's going on with jack Canfield calls By the way, I think is a little bit callous, but I think it's also accurate it's he calls our situations the so what, because it's up to us to get out of our way. So we've got to get out of our own way. So every day, take a deep breath like I do, and you know step into the world and step into the It's a beautiful day and from that and taking on and taking action. Now I have three advisors who were part of the secret There's wonderful film back in the you know, 2005 2006 2007 somewhere in there. But you know, the idea of the law of attraction is only effective if you look at it's a beautiful day and start Imagineering how you want today to go. The only way to cause that day to happen the way you want it to is to take action. Step into your life. Take action, take the steps celebrate the mini successes along the way and Keep your chin up because it's a beautiful day.
Paul Zelizer 06:03
I'm glad you referenced your history in personal growth and in coaching and and that's part of the story here you're like actually doing quite well this was in your time in Albuquerque you built a coaching company, you're writing books, Stephen Covey was endorsing them, he had a lot of traction, like talk about that part of your work.
Mark Weinstein 06:22
Well, this is in between my two social networks. And I really believe in in growth, human growth. And you know, for us, you know, one of the opportunities for us and these, you know, great lives that we're able to live by the way greatness is only something you can define for your life and greatness for you might just be relaxing all day or, you know, getting sitting on a beach or playing a guitar or, you know, building a disruptive social network that fixes the problems or, you know, there's so many ways to you know, inspire, you know, our own personal greatness. So it's very personal to us. And so, you know, my coaching company really happens. In between my two social networks in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the state government gave my first social network a $300,000. Grant, to stay and build the social network. They're super family calm, superfriends, calm. We're talking about the turn of the millennium. millennium. So for three years in a row, these were PC Magazine, top 100 social networks at the beginning of the social network era, super family.com, launched in 1998. Now, in between, and also for my employees, it's always about what do I need? What what coursework, what training, what personal improvement? What kind of disruptive thing do you want to do for yourself, to expand your awareness to enhance your life to get what's in the way out of the way to unveil what you don't know that you don't know? And bring that into your awareness? So, you know, my coaching company was also all about That. And that's also how, you know, I like to run companies, you know, corporations for profit corporations is always working with the team giving them access to whatever coursework they want. It doesn't have to connect to their position because ultimately it does, because we bring our whole humanity to what we do at work.
Paul Zelizer 08:21
Remember here and when I went to Zappos, and Tony Shea and the leadership team, back in the day, were using positive psychology and coaching in that both culture and Tony said on the day, they were handing out t shirts to their employees, they thank you for making us a billion dollar a year company. Tony was talking about the culture. He said, Paul, if you get the culture, right, and everything else will take care of itself. And one of the things that they did to quote try to get the culture right at Zappos, is they had every employee meet with a coach paid for on staff at Zappos every year and work on their happiness. balls, not how to sell more shoes, right? That was his internet shoe company. They said you know, what do you what's gonna make you happier? You want to take more vacations? Okay, we're gonna work on that and you want to make more money okay, let's come up with a plan and the coach would meet with folks so you want to get fitter? Okay, great. Let's work on that. And so your comment there about not even know your social network. It's not like people have to take courses on how to code better or whatever, like but really looking at the holistic human and tying that to business very much reminded me of that conversation with Tony.
Paul Zelizer 09:38
So you started a social network, you like kind of transitioned into coaching and you're kind of rocking things and you're getting books and you're building a whole company and you're working with landmark education, developing all kinds of programs and we talked about before we hit the record button, Mark, and then you like hear this thing that literally made your jaw drop that Mark Zuckerberg says What did what did Mark Zuckerberg say?
Mark Weinstein 10:02
You know, first of all in my coaching work, I was doing a lot of tech consulting, of course, coming out of you know, tech, and I was you know very much watching the industry that I you know, I was one of the early founders of there many early founders of social networking. But I'm watching the industry as it emerges and grows and you know, we're all watching, you know, MySpace comes up, Facebook pops up, eats MySpace is lunch, Facebook is now really rolling, you're rolling into 2010. Facebook is on a roll MySpace is in a complete and total utter decline because they didn't stay relevant. And Mark Zuckerberg makes a statement, in an interview, believe with the Guardian, where he says, privacy is a social norm of the past. And I watched him say this, and my jaw dropped. And there really is this experience, which I never really understood. You know, this idea of jaw dropping. We've already About an in books and we say things like, well, that's jaw dropping. But as I discovered, for many people actually have the experience of their jaw dropping. And in that moment, my jaw dropped. I could not close my mouth. I'm like, you know, I couldn't even speak. It was like I was incredulous. Did I just hear that? Did he really say those words? Right, right. Right. Right. Right. Did he say that? I mean, is it okay? It's okay for the world, for the governments of the world to know, who you are, what religion you are, what your sexual preferences what your ethnicity is, you know, what your health issues are? What your fight you know, all this stuff. That's like, Okay, are you out of your mind, Mr. Zuckerberg. And so, that jaw dropping moment was what I call an awareness. Because in that moment, I basically in my own soul had no choice. I said to myself, I've got to fix this as one of the early films of social media, social media was not designed to that our privacy would be lost. It was designed so that we would have complete privacy while we use technology to enhance our lives and expand our relationships. So I was, you know, just I was flabbergasted. And in that moment, I pledged that I would do this. Now, it took a couple of years to get myself organized because of course, not of course, but I mean, I was running my coaching company, which is doing very well peak life habits. I written my books on greatness, the habitually great book series, and three of the books were just coming out now is 2011. three books were just coming out one on productivity and time management, one on language and communication and the master book I just rewritten habitually great, master your habits Own your destiny, endorsed by Dr. Stephen Covey. And as it turns out, I was not going to be there to promote those books or use them with my clients. Because I had a high Calling, I had to fix this. And so in that moment I relocated took me, as I said several months to organize, and really, you know, and establish life in New Mexico. This time I knew I had to come to Silicon Valley. And so 2011 I relocated to Silicon Valley. And in 2013, I start talking to people hiring attorneys, lots of things, hiring just a couple of engineers, people also had worked with me before. In 2013, we complete our first financing and we start a beta project for three years under our corporate name, which is scruples, and we start building the social network of the future, that doesn't have newsfeed manipulation, where you don't have ads where we're not deciding what you should see what you shouldn't see where we're not censoring you because you're conservative or progressive. You know, a couple And since social network with all the features people love, and none of the Bs, and in 2016, we announced me We, at South by Southwest, we went in important recognition at South by as startup of the year finalist for innovative world technology. And that's how it starts.
Paul Zelizer 14:18
We get into the technology and how it works and some of the problems more with what's out there. But before we do, or just anything you could say about that pivot process. Like right now we're in a time with these multiple crises with COVID-19. And the economic crisis, a lot of people are trying to move from one thing to another, you made a really big pivot. Anything you would say to somebody who's in the middle, either an inner calling or an outer like, whoops, that thing that I was doing isn't quite as viable now. Any suggestions or advice as somebody who's gone through some big pivots in your career to somebody who is either in That process now is thinking about it.
Mark Weinstein 15:02
Well, first of all, for everybody listening as as we all know, from our own experience, pivots are exciting. And pivots are very challenging. And pivots require one fundamental, really, they require one fundamental above everything else. And that's your 1,000% belief that you're right. And it's interesting because you know, when I talk about the habitual patterns of human beings, I'll talk about righteousness. This is not about righteousness. This is your belief that you're right about your pivot and your idea and that you are 1,000% committed to seeing it through no matter what the hardships because, listen, everybody, we know this. There are hardships in the road of life. Life is perfect in its imperfection. And you've got to be ready for being completely stopped by what's in the way and Figuring out how to get around it, you've got to be ready to hear everybody in your life tell you that you are wrong. And you have got to be strong enough. If you believe you're right, to stay the course. And you've also got to be strong enough to recognize when it's time if there's a crack, and you realize, wait a minute, the world didn't come forward the way I thought it was. It's it's important to have your humility and your strength, fuck about great power to say, Oh, I'm wrong, and either pivot your idea or stop. So this is very, very critical.
Paul Zelizer 16:36
Sharing the mark. So before we get into movie and how it works, let's just understand some of the problems use some language there. Some people probably knows what it is, some don't. But let's give like three examples and go just a little deeper. So let's talk about newsfeed manipulation. Like, what is that if I'm not super techie Like I heard about algorithms, but don't really know what they are. unpack that a little bit for me.
Mark Weinstein 17:06
I'm going to give you two examples for you and our for all of our listeners. Number one, you're on Facebook, you have an account on Facebook, and you've got your contacts and your close friends. And the pages and groups, you know, you've got this whole million, this whole world that you're connected to. And so who you know who decides what shows up in your newsfeed who decides if your best friend Dave's post shows up in your newsfeed? Does it just happen because they've posted it? No, it doesn't. What happens is Facebook has very sophisticated data scientists and psychologists and Facebook's algorithm is being tweaked and manipulated all the time. your newsfeed is decided by Facebook who's deciding what kind of content to show you that's going to make outrage you and get you deeper engage what kind of content from your Friends are from Facebook is going to get you more engaged and spending money on Facebook clicking on ads, purchasing something. It's not at all about you being connected to who you're connected to who you chose to be connected to. It's about Facebook's algorithm deciding how to keep you maximally engaged so that they can maximize the revenue that they get from you. That's what it's all about. Now, second example. Your page owner on Facebook, your coach, or your star or your business, you've got a page on Facebook for your followers. You post on your page for all your followers. Let's say you've got, you know, 50,000 followers, or you know, a million or 5 million doesn't really matter, or thousand, no matter what Facebook's maximum allowable reach is about 5%. So you're only going to reach about 5%. This is well documented 5% of your followers do you have Those followers know, Facebook owns them again, the algorithm is in the way, because Facebook is not interested in serving your posts to your followers in timeline order in their newsfeed. Facebook is interested in maximizing the revenue of your followers because they're also members of Facebook. So Facebook is taking your page into consideration with 1000 other data points about how they should manipulate and organize that person's newsfeed. So you could pay to boost you know, and then you reach slightly higher. So here's the difference. Me we know newsfeed manipulation. If you are you know, whoever you're connected to whatever group you're in whatever page you follow, wherever your close friends your contacts are, everything in your newsfeed is timeline order. This is common sense maybe doesn't get in the way. So if your friends are posting it's in your newsfeed and timeline order. If the page is people you're following your follower. The page owners are posting timeline order group's timeline order if you're a page owner, or group owner, and you're posting everybody who's in your group, or everybody's following your page sees it in timeline order. Common Sense, everybody. This is what social media is about. It's about us staying connected. It's not about some algorithm determining how much money they can get from us.
Paul Zelizer 20:19
So if I'm a listener, I'm like, Okay, that makes sense. But we are you telling me, the movie has no ads, like people don't pay me money to get their posts in the newsfeed. How does that work?
Mark Weinstein 20:33
Now, that's a great question. You know, if you think about it, this idea of surveillance capitalism, like, Oh, you have to give up your data in order for us to give you a social network. I mean, that's a crock, everybody. I mean, this, this is a perpetration, this is a lie. So you know, they This is what Facebook and Google want us to believe. They've been selling this down the river for years. Remember, Cambridge Analytica now Has personality profile says everything on us on all 220 million American adults. The Russians have it all. They can target and manipulate us at any time through Facebook's newsfeed through Facebook's advertising model. And so what I'm saying absolutely Paul is our members, our customers to serve, not data to target, manipulate or sell and what this means is that me we is a freemium business model freemium, here's how freemium works. Everything that you need to have a great experience on me we is free, free forever. You'll see on our start button me we is free forever, and you're a customer. You've told us things that you might like things that you might want. So there are freemium. It's just think of fortnight think of gaming. You know, it works really well. You love the free stuff you might pay for something extra. And certainly on me, we, you know, we are members supported, but not subscription. Let's say you want our we have a premium membership that includes us. features that are completely not necessary, but people love them. Let's see one live voice and live video. You want access to our custom emojis and custom stickers, and you know our store. So in our custom themes, so you can have unlimited access to that store where we sell those elecard to other people by the way, emojis 2800 of them are free on me we see you don't need to buy any custom ones. But in some markets, this is very popular. You know, me we journals, we have stories, we have disappearing content. We have a great custom camera. We have groups, we have all kinds of you know, custom news feeds for your close friends and your contacts. All this stuff is free. But also we have a feature called journals. Nobody else has this. This is separate from photo albums of course we have photo albums, but now we have journals. So if you want your stories not to disappear, you can sort and organize them into video journals. And this becomes part of your you know, your sort of video legacy of your life. We all work so hard to make our stories on Instagram and snap but then poof they're gone. Not me. We, we've got stories that's free. You went journals $1 99 a month, or it's bundled into me we premium for 499 a month and many, many other features. So it's freemium. Also our pages, picture this, you've got 1000 followers or 10 million followers, you only reach 5% of them on Facebook. On me we you reach 100 hundred percent of your followers. So what does this mean? If you've got 1000 followers on Facebook and you only reach 50? Well, if you only have 50 followers on me we you're actually even with fate with Facebook already. pages we charge $1 99 a month for That's right. $24 a year for 100% reach 100% of the time and you can sell your followers whatever you want. Me we doesn't interfere me we doesn't throw ads at them. me. He doesn't throw video ads to me. He doesn't interfere and repost him. shows up in their newsfeed
Paul Zelizer 24:01
as a result of this movies being growing really quickly, hey, talk to us a little bit about the growth. So you, you kind of officially went live in 2016 with three years of kind of, you know, research and building the product and building the team, but 2016 you go live, you announce it to the world. Here we are four, four and a half years later talk to us about the growth that you've seen in these four, four and a half years.
Mark Weinstein 24:26
Well, first of all this is this is very interesting because we only have one person on our marketing team. So only one and that's that's that's David, and he's in charge of PR social media. He's, you know, he does so many things for us. Everybody else is all about the product because we are all about the product. So the idea is, you know, if you build it, they will come. So we've never stopped. You know, we're determined to engineer the best social network in the world with none of the BS. So we announced in 2016 at South by But we don't go into marketing bench No way. We continue to engineer we build an enterprise division called me we Pro. So if you happen to, you know, not only love our consumer division, but you've got a business or a project, or a team that you need some Walden communication for and you don't want to use slack or Microsoft Teams, you can use me we pro separate app. totally separate, you know, separate division. But now so here's what's happened with nobody on marketing, except for just David managing the whole thing. We've grown to over 8,300,000 members, already 8 million members. So we've grown 5 million members just a little bit over a year. It's just happening. We're translated into 19 languages. The world is hearing about me we in the last 45 days, we've gotten massively great press around the world. And people are just hearing about it, word of mouth coming over. And imagine this right now. Still, most of them The world isn't aware yet. And soon we will start investing in marketing so that everybody knows about me. So all the conversations that people are having around the world about what should we do Twitter censoring Facebook is censoring. They're stealing our information. They're targeting us. They're manipulating us. Where do we go? Someone says, Let's go to me.
Paul Zelizer 26:21
And that certainly happened in the aware printers community. There was already a lot of conversation in our community. And people were looking at alternatives and a small group said, Let's check out me and actually met with you all couple weeks ago, and that just what a fabulous group of humans and we're gonna keep going in this direction people like Andre Lee and Mark silver and Jason Stein and other people in the aware partners community and one of the things they said is that just how much they appreciate it both the values, and also the humans, right. It's the relationality of how you all showed up. in that conversation, you earned some bonus points there. So let me just say that.
Mark Weinstein 27:05
Thank you. And you know, we should mention our advisory board. And you know, the, you know, your community, your partner's community. I've known Jason Stein for a few decades and we just reconnected he, you know, you guys were talking about me we independent Jason I hadn't talked in 20 years. And Jason reached out to me after he discovered it was me running me weak, but we also have jack Canfield, you know, the father of Chicken Soup for the Soul. You know, the the greatest coach in the world the success principles. You know, we've got Marci shimoff and incredible leader, female leaders, she wrote all the Chicken Soup for the Soul for women books, she wrote happiness for no reason, love for no reason. You know, these are investors and advisors. In me We, the Reverend Michael Beckwith, you know, the founder of the wonderful movement called the copy is a wonderful advisor. For me, so you know, and we have other great thought leaders and business leaders. So there's really a team here of high integrity. You know, we have Raj sisodia, the founder of the worldwide movement called conscious capitalism. Raj is an advisory board member, Raj coach, john Mackey, from the beginning with whole foods to their exit, Raj wrote the book with john Mackey, you know, doing well, by doing good this is a very, very important philosophy for the world, you know, for how to run a capitalist enterprise.
Paul Zelizer 28:35
Since you're talking about your support and your advisors, I just want to pause and do a thank you to the folks who support this podcast, we have a fabulous community called the aware printers community, you've already heard some of the names of people who are in it. And what do we do? What aware printers community does is we look for solutions and ways to amplify people who have Impact oriented business that might be a conversation about, hey, we're concerned about the social media platforms that are out there. And what are the alternatives? Right now we're organizing around a new course called inclusion and conscious business. Let's face it, folks. In contrast, business and social impact work, we have not been inclusive in the ways that we need to be historically. So we reached out to several of our members, some of the best diversity, equity inclusion trainers, I know Nicole Lee and Erica Hines, and in a couple weeks, they're gonna be doing a course where a number of us are helping to market we've all signed up. And let's get some more tools for creating more inclusive businesses in this space could be as simple as I need somebody to build a website or I need somebody to do the production on my podcast. Elsie Flynn art is in the community as a fabulous Podcast Producer and owns a company called enterprise now and another one podcasts down. So people who know these kinds of businesses have world class skill sets and are relational focused on helping values oriented business go to the next level. So if you could use more community like that, I want to invite you to go check out the aware printers community at aware printers comm forward slash community. And thank you were printers for sponsoring this podcast. I want to go back a little bit mark and in 2018, you are starting to get some press in the New York Times you wrote a letter that started dear Facebook, talk to us a little bit about what was in that letter and how some of the concerns that were in that letter, either. Have they stayed the same? Have they gotten worse? Are they getting better? What's your sense of your major competitor here? Yeah, you're marketing yourself in this episode is an alternative to Facebook. Yeah. Is it getting worse? Is it getting better? Is it staying about the same
30:58
so
Mark Weinstein 31:00
That's interesting, the dear Facebook letter was such such a pinnacle for us. Yeah, this is this is after right after Facebook, you know was, you know, the Emperor had no clothes, Cambridge analytical scandal came out, it was revealed that Facebook had allowed the profiles on virtually every adult American to be, you know, stolen, sold down the river by Cambridge analytic directly to the Russians. And, you know, as we now know, Cambridge Analytica influence the 2016 elections influenced Brexit and this is just you know, this is this is so wrong and just like not allowed. So, so we we published a dear Facebook letter, and we you know, we just kind of said, Hey, you know, what's with all this lying What's with all this? deception, and you know, because Zuckerberg had written a letter also in the New York Times Just, you know, moments moments earlier. So and, you know, we took a full page ad in the New York Times, but here's the thing it, it really positioned the difference. And from 2018 you know, through now we've just been growing as we talked about. No, it hasn't changed. Facebook is always in trouble, more so than ever, all the time for you know, flagrant violations of our privacy. So it's really just incredible that they exist. I mean, even their acquisition of WhatsApp. For our listeners who don't know Facebook owns WhatsApp. So when you think you're being very private on WhatsApp, you want to be alerted that Facebook has been fined 10s of millions of dollars worldwide for stealing all your data from WhatsApp even though they promised they wouldn't touch any of your data when they bought WhatsApp. That was their commitment to the FTC. The Federal Trade Commission. You know, and so it's just repeated Mark Zuckerberg is now being investigated for you know, and it looks like you know, he may be indicted for lying to Congress. So it doesn't change, you know, because they're not an ethical company. They're an amoral company. They're just chasing the dollar. So it gets worse all the time. You know, they're constant, constant constant, we all see it in the news. So I'm not going to go ahead and list it. It's the list is too long. And so here comes me we, because there is a market opportunity. And I also have written an op ed in the Wall Street Journal. And you know, I compete with Facebook and they're no monopoly. That was a year ago, in June of 2019 of The Wall Street Journal. I had not edited another conservative paper called the New York Post. And you know, remember, folks, I'm neither conservative nor liberal. My politics have nothing to do with my website. Unlike jack Dorsey's politics on Twitter, or Mark Zuckerberg politics on Facebook. Me we is for the good guys, if you're, you know if you're hateful, you're inciting violence, if you're bullying, you know, if you're breaking the law, you're out. But if you're just talking about whether a vaccine is a good thing or a bad thing, are you just talking about you know, I'm a conservative or I'm a liberal, it's none of our business. Social media is not supposed to be the arbiter of truth and the arbiter of political righteousness. Social media is supposed to allow people to engage in the discourse of ideas and the private communication amongst themselves and me where you can post your idea to anybody. So it is possible all that you know, there may be a false idea on me we it's not our job to moderate what's false and what's true. Just like it shouldn't be social medias idea to moderate whether an aspirin is good for your heart or not. Because As it turns out, studies show maybe it's not. But is that our business to decide whether people should talk about aspirin or not for your heart? So I think that that fundamentally, that's absurd. But we do moderate carefully to make sure that the site is what I say, for the good guys. Anyway, the whole what's happened is social media is their business models. You know, this electioneering that Facebook allows the censorship that goes on on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and now Pinterest and snap, it's way over the top. And you know, it's worse than ever in these privacy violations worse than ever, but that's why every day I wake up, and I know that what I'm doing is exactly right. The world wants me we The world needs me we, and we're here.
Paul Zelizer 35:49
One of the things that in our circles happens a lot mark is people who are doing anti racist work, in particular activism in general. But let's it's most, we hear the most stories of people getting put In Facebook Jail, right? or Instagram jail. They're an activist, they're talking about issues, these issues are well documented. And the algorithms will put somebody in Facebook Jail, in other words, literally suspend their account or these posit, you know, temporarily, and you can't get a human, and you're an activist of color and you're staying, you know, relationship with your fans and your community using these platforms. And then just with no word, no warning, no, just the algorithm, which are racists algorithms. We know that. I'll put an episode with Lisa Renee Hall, who is a fabulously smart activist and woman of color, we talked about algorithms, and you can hear these and in her own words, describe this. And like, how does me we work with that, like you guys have no algorithms whatsoever? Is that what you're telling? is this is this a place that if I'm doing work that's about social change? And, you know, it might be not wanted by a company, but it's very grounded in data and the embodied experience, let's say if communities of color me was never going to put me in jail, is that what you're telling me?
Mark Weinstein 37:18
No, it's not what I'm telling you. If you're a bad person, you're definitely going to jail. If you are inciting violence, if you are shouting out hate, you know, if you are breaking the law, you're definitely going to jail.
Paul Zelizer 37:32
But I'm talking about actors of color who are doing really needed necessary work that's getting put In Facebook Jail.
Mark Weinstein 37:39
Yeah, but that's because Facebook uses an algorithm. And Facebook uses politicized algorithms to decide you know, what, who's, you know, allowed to talk and who's not it? That is completely absurd. So, Facebook's methodology, and this is all part of their whole business model, which is all screwed up and these outcomes Um, so, you know, we have a couple expressions can happen on me, we or should have been on me we. And in this case that can't happen on me we because we don't have an algorithm identifying, you know, and flagging that and putting people in jail automatically. We don't have an algorithm like that. So, you know, we do have block and report on every post on every group on every page. So that if a member thinks that a another member or another group or another page is breaking our terms, that any member can report something. And then actually human being investigates our trust and safety team investigates. So if that can't happen on me, we, and this is this is really the point, Paul, right. It's like this censorship is completely out of control on these other sites. People are just having a conversation, this hysteria about vaccines. I mean, it's just out of control, are we America, you know, I have children, you may have children, people have kids, or they're going to Or their kids are grown, they already dealt with this issue. Are we allowed to have opinions? We're allowed to have opinions whether we're Republicans or Democrats or independents, or libertarians. I mean, we're allowed to have opinions about everything. As long as we're not, you know, inciting violence, inciting hatred, you know, breaking the law, bullying, etc. So, I don't understand Facebook's model, but I know that they're stuck because it all ties into their revenue model. So they've got this incredible, algorithmic, amoral system that then they plug in their politics to Twitter does it now to snap does it now to Pinterest doesn't now to YouTube doesn't have to. Not on me, we?
Paul Zelizer 39:44
It's good to hear. I do hope that your trust and safety team has diversity on into thinking about things like because humans are fallible too. And I'm also really glad to hear that the algorithms are not running the show there. So, y'all got 2.3 million users in four years or a little over? Like, what's next for me?
Mark Weinstein 40:10
So, you know, really, and if you look at that we we didn't, you know, we weren't even at a million, you know, two years ago. So,
Paul Zelizer 40:18
point 3 million users in the past 24 months or less,
Mark Weinstein 40:21
right? Right with no marketing, no marketing, zero acquisition costs completely organic growth worldwide worldwide. 40% of our traffic is in the US. 30% in Europe, 30% in Asia were translated into 19 languages. So what's next is we're ready to grow. We're engineered to grow our servers are set to scale. So what's next is we believe there's a sweet spot for me, we we believe that we can grow over the next couple of years to a comfortable level, about 300 million members. We are not here saying we're gonna you know, take Facebook down. That's it. That's it. You know, that's just not a statement to make. Facebook is a big strong company with billions of dollars in the bank and a $700 billion market cap. But we believe that there are like minded people throughout the world as is demonstrated by our membership. We haven't spent a dime on any PR outside the US but 60% of our traffic is outside the USA outside North America. So we believe it's time to build me we our revenue model is working. So we're actually our revenue is growing about 25% a month. We believe that by the end of q2 next year, we can, you know, member supported be profitable enough to run our own operations. We believe that it's time to grow, it's time for the world to know about me we
Paul Zelizer 41:50
would help our listeners understand the revenue model a little bit more. That's one of the things people listen for, we ask interesting and hopefully hard questions. And we also talked about like the impact and diversity, equity inclusion issues. And the other thing people have synonyms for is like I try to get as granular as possible about revenue models. So this freemium model, you talked a little bit about it, but unpack that a little bit more. And Mark, like, how many you got a point 3 million users? How many people are premium users? How many people tend to buy, you know, all the cart upgrades, just try to give people a sense of like, Yeah, what percentage of folks are using it completely free? And what percentage of folks say wow, there's a lot of value here, I want to help me out or I want this extra feature.
Mark Weinstein 42:38
So pull it, you know, there's a lot of good studies on freemium and for all of our listeners, lots of good studies on freemium. freemium works when people love what's free, so fundamental premise. People have to love what's free so we give everybody everything they need to have a great experience free. As I mentioned, you know, your close friends news feeds your content. attacks, news feeds, groups, you can create all kinds of groups, you can have open groups where anybody can join anybody from the whole me we membership, millions of members, you can have selective where people have to apply to join. Or you can have private groups just for your coaching community or your family, your friends, or your you know, your private hobby, whatever you want, you know, so And of course, we've got pages, but look at the free stuff again, the custom camera stories or 2800 emojis, I mean, there's so many features that are free and people love it. freemium only requires about 5% of your members to step up and invest in you know, in you know, in extra feature premium works really well with that ratio. So, you know, the vast majority of our members may not spend anything premium also works over time. So people come on, they love the platform, they use it, they love it, they use it, they love it. And at some point, then they decide, oh, I want to buy this really cool. Custom set of you know, emojis, whatever they are, you know, we've got all kinds, we've got some cool taco emoji. I actually had some cool COVID emojis too, you know, just sort of like, you know, we're all quarantined here and we get that packet away free. You know, there's lots of fun stuff on me we for free, and then there's things that you can upgrade to. So and again, you can also do it on the cart, but that's how freemium works. You don't need 100% you don't need 20% 5% of our members investing in, you know, upgrades, buying something fun or cool. This is how the gaming companies work. They don't need 100% of their members spending money on, you know, in app purchases, and me We works the same way. So it's very straightforward. freemium works. And it what the great thing about freemium is it means that our members, our customers to serve, they're never customers to sell or Target or manipulate.
Paul Zelizer 44:57
I love that. Thanks for unpacking that for us, Mark. So, social media been around for a while. it's problematic in a lot of cases. But it's also like in this conversation in the aware printers community, people are using the language. It's like the new village green, right, especially with COVID. Like we literally can't go be in large community together in person and in a village green or Town Square in a plaza, we would call it in New Mexico, these online spaces, in many cases, our village greens, or at least one of our village green, where do you think social media is going? And what would you want impact oriented people to know about given where you think it's headed?
Mark Weinstein 45:42
Well, social media is here to stay. You know, we all need it, we all use it. Now the average person is engaged in about five different platforms. So you know, the value proposition of me is not abandon your other platforms, but to bring your Real life to me, so that you're not worried about who's watching it about, you know who's owning your data. Because everywhere else your data is owned, your data is pumped into the vast worldwide data ecosystem and you are manipulated and targeted without even realizing it. Your critical thinking your free expression are completely gone and you don't even realize it. So the future of social media is really going to be driven I believe, by this real split between companies that are manipulating and stealing you know, manipulating you and stealing your data. And companies doing the right thing conscious companies like me, we know it takes years to build a platform to actually compete with Facebook. We've done it it takes years to do because Facebook is so multifaceted and multi featured. So we we is not a one trick pony. Me we has many great technologies that we all love, you know, and we've aggregated them all into Very simple, easy to use interface By the way, our rating in the App Store is like 4.4 with over 160,000 reviews now, so don't take my word for how great movie is, check out our reviews in the app stores, download it, play with it, use it, sign up, bring your friends, you know me we as a movement everybody me we as a movement, and the future is really high integrity, high value. We know from the studies that 80% of social media users are pissed. And look at all these conversations around Tick tock, and the Chinese owning your data, you know, never mind. You know what they can do with that. Imagine now what's happening with tic tac, and all that data ported to the Chinese, especially about young people that they're going to have forever. Now they'll be able to covertly target advertise manipulate the thought processes of so many young people. The Future of Social media is really with companies like me, we social media done right? In this real split with this emergence of this movement with decentralization of data and protection of data. And you know, what we want to watch carefully is for regulation because regulation could take this the wrong place. We don't want governments to regulate surveillance capitalism. We want the free market to take care of the problem and show the Facebook's of the world that they are wrong about their business models. So we also want to watch governments for doing the wrong thing.
Paul Zelizer 48:28
Or if there is some you were hoping we'd get to on today's topic about the rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook and all that me we as if we haven't gotten to something yet. And that conversation that you were hoping we would get to what would that be?
Mark Weinstein 48:48
You know, Paul, key to a transformative world is the call to action. So you know, the same thing With what we've witnessed recently, with the civil rights movement with the passing of the great john lewis, you know, all of this, and all of us are accountable for taking action. It's no longer permissible for us to be passive, either while Facebook steals our data, or while there is, you know, sort of indoctrinated racism in our system. So they actually both speak to the same thing. It's the inaction, it's complacency, that allows problems to persist in all parts of our society. And so it's up to us to take the actions to take action to be part of the solution. In all of the areas in all the inequities in our system because our Republic, our democracy, is really magnificently envisioned. But in order for it to execute and operate properly, we must be active. So, you know, that's that's what I've say to people, get your butts over to me we, you know, become active in your lives, you know, in ways that are appropriate for you. But passivity is no longer permissible for any of us. We all have to be responsible citizens about all of these infractions that are occurring. It's time for us to take action.
Paul Zelizer 50:31
Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Mark Weinstein 50:34
It's my pleasure. Thank you very much. And thank you everybody for listening.
Paul Zelizer 50:38
So put the links to me we The New York Times article, the Mark's earlier books, the habitual growth book series, if we can find anything on Super family.com, the dear Facebook letter, the Lisa Renee Hall episode, and anything else that I may have missed. So just look in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening quickly. reminder that we now publish episodes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So if you've got an idea like this episode came from some of the members that in the aware printers community, you don't have to be in the community to make a suggestion, but I'm just using this as an example. And here we are. We love listener suggested topics and guests, please go to the web printers website and go to our contact page and make a suggestion. For now I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these appointed times. Thank you for all the positive impact that you're having.
WHAT IS AWAREPRENEURS?
Awarepreneurs is a popular conscious business and social entrepreneur podcast. You can find out more at www.awarepreneurs.com