Greater intimacy and happiness is possible on social media — if you just dump most of your friends. That's the message this International Friendship Month (February) from a new social media platform launching called Just10. A new University of Oxford study suggests that no matter how many online followers or friends, the average person has only has 4 REAL friends. One careless or ill-advised social media post can literally ruin your life or career, meaning many say little of substance for fear of recrimination. Just10 protects you by allowing you to choose just 10 friends and ensuring that all data disappears after 10 days. It will never make members' data public-facing or searchable; it's ad-free, and it will never sell or rent subscriber information.
Just10 also takes free expression well past the "Like" button. It offers Meactions, commenting icons that allow for a range of emotions and responses to what people post. While there are stock Meactions available, unlike any other social network, people are also quickly and easily able to upload their own pictures, even of their own faces, so they can offer highly personalized and tailored responses and comments. Why settle for Reactions when you can have Meactions?
"We felt that it was impossible for people to freely express themselves if everyone in the world is watching and judging," said Frederick Ghahramani, who over the past decade has built and invested in start-ups that have generated billions in product sales, but who is also a father, and mindful of the day his own kids will be online. "I don't want my kids' futures undone by something stupid they might say in the heat of the moment. And I want them to have a safe space online where they can freely express their ideas and opinions, without fear of being profiled and tracked by advertisers looking to exploit their data, hiring managers looking to profile their personalities, or even jealous exes."
Reports of security breaches at major retailers, health insurance companies, and financial institutions are also a concern, along with online fraud, which costs billions every year in North America alone. Given the ubiquitous nature of end user data collection, and the default public nature of most social networks, some social media wounds are completely self-inflicted.
Just10 is designed for anyone who does or should value privacy, including parents who don`t want to put their children at risk, anyone who has or wants a job, business people, activists and change makers, journalists, politicians, celebrities, and anyone else who might find that expressing a personal opinion or picture could come back to haunt them. It's also for anyone worried about their information being used against them by criminals through data breaches and internet fraud.
