Facebook finally has competition coming, and some folk are taking notice because they tire of Facebook’s antics that, on the surface, seem questionable or unethical.
Unthink.com is billing itself as the anti-Facebook in that it is an open and free form of communication social network site — and one that will not sell personal information to advertisers.
Starting up outside the traditional high-tech spots of Silicon Valley in Northern California or New York, the Tampa, Fla.-based Unthink.com believes it can begin to breach the formidable fortress surrounding the royal monarch of social media, Facebook, and its 800 million users worldwide.
It takes a mentality takes a certain amount of audacity and intestinal fortitude to announced that publicly, much less execute such an ambitious objective.
Nevertheless, here’s why the prospect of Unthink or other social media entity eventually dethroning Facebook as the king of social media could materialize, though it will be undoubtedly an awesome undertaking:
- Facebook users covet the attributes of the site, but they decry the sinister way the braintrust of Facebook [mainly Mark Zuckerberg] has made personal information available to unknown entities in cyberspace.
- Facebook users have complained incessantly about clandestine changes in the infrastructure of the cite and lack of notification of its many implications to its 800 million users until after it has already been implemented.
- And then, once the changed have been infused within the structure, they mainly leave it to users to figure out themselves the methods they must undertake to protect themselves from vulnerability and unwanted entries into groups, etc.
- Facebook users are unsettled by a lot of the confusing esoteric language [small print] purposely designed to bewitch users into not discerning how much of their sensitive information can be intercepted by other users or cyberspace predators.
- Unthinker’s credo is that prospective users are not users, they’re owners. Unthink is not in control, you are. It even has its own manifesto, deeds and covenants. That is a very attractive attribute to privacy advocates.
“If we want to be free, we have to control our own communications … we have to claim that power,” CEO Natasha Dedis shouted with blowtorch intensity to the crowd at September’s Tampa Bay Barcamp, before delving into all the ways that Facebook does its users wrong.
Dedis said the idea sprouted in her head when her son pleaded with her to get on Facebook or face constant derision from his peers. But when she read the terms of agreement, she couldn’t willingly subscribe to what Facebook demanded in exchange for usage.
“He was really stressed about it, like he didn’t have a choice — he had to be on Facebook,” Dedis said. Therefore Dedis hatched her own social media idea and got venture capitalist DouglasBay Capital to lay down $2.5 million start-up funding to launch the site.
There are many social media addicts who use Facebook with trepidation and suspicion and who are watching closely to see if the site can work. Let the all-out offensive on Facebook’s empire begin.
–terry shropshire
