No one can deny the fact that social media is engulfing our modern society at a phenomenal rate. The concept of social media serves various purposes including exchange ideas, sharing the interest, announcing and participating events and more.
In the past few years, social media like Facebook and Twitter have become the central point for news updates, and information sharing platform as well. There is a popular saying, “There’s no such thing as free lunch” and if there is one, the consumer is the product. And that’s what happening exactly with the social media at present.
OpenBook – Threat to Facebook?
Many fail to recognise the fact that it is often used to collect information on its users. As a result, there are companies trying to create a platform that truly serves the user. One such company is ‘OpenBook‘, a Facebook rival based in the Netherlands.
Raised €60,000
Not so long ago, OpenBook raised a funding of €60,000 through the Kickstarter campaign to accelerate the growth of the company, especially the mobile version initially. It’s worth mentioning here the previous campaign of €100,000 did not work as the plan.
Facebook’s biggest threat! Openbook
According to the founder and CEO Joel Hernandez, he had always wanted to make a Facebook alternative and was encouraged so by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Founded in April 2018, OpenBook is an open-source and privacy-friendly (zero-tracking) social network contributing 30% of its revenue to improvise the experience. Moreover, the source code for the social network is also said to be open-source, meaning free for anyone to download, inspect and reproduce.
In a stark contrast to other social networking sites, OpenBook is privacy-friendly, customizable to a large extent, and easy to move from existing networks. On top of that, it includes all features one would expect from a social network, plus it allows its users to customise their own profile.
To simplify the process, Openbook made switching from other social networks easy with just a simple drag-and-drop tool, where users can easily transfer the data from your old social networks. Another core component in Openbook is revenues are not made of ads.
As per the company, the revenue model of Openbook is a mixture between helping the enterprise set their own private social network for their employees and an open marketplace, initially for products and then the service.
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