Edward Balassanian is the founder of a new social media app. But he says he really doesn't use social media -- at least the apps you're probably thinking of.
“It’s not because I’m prehistoric," he said during a recent chat. "It’s because I fundamentally don’t intellectually or emotionally align with the metaphor that they have been promoting. To me, what I call social 1.0, is like walking into a party with a loudspeaker and everyone else has a loudspeaker and they’re yelling as loud as they can. And you’re trying to listen to all this noise coming at you at once.”
It might be a familiar feeling for anyone who has amassed more than a few hundred Facebook "friends" or follows thousands on Twitter. So Balassanian, a former Microsoft engineer turned serial entrepreneur, is building what he believes could be the next iteration.
Strings is a new app that gives users something that might feel like a blend of Slack and Instagram -- but with enough customization and privacy that you could use it for sensitive conversations or public posts to share with the world on Strings and any other social app.
The Strings app lets users create strings, which is like a digital board where you can share pretty much any type of media and then decide who you want to invite to have access to view it or collaborate with you on that particular topic. That might mean a string focused on the inner workings of cryptocurrencies with just a few high-level contributors or a string for your friend's birthday party that only allows people with invites inside a geofenced area to contribute -- giving a level of privacy many apps don't provide.
"We’re taking the focus off of the people and personalities and onto the stories that bring us together."
In coming months, Balassanian plans to add monetization features that would let the creator of a string decide whether to allow advertisements and who those ads could be from. This would also provide a revenue sharing model where the content creators and Strings share in any ad dollars or subscription fees.
Balassanian used the example of a friend of his who posts strings about hiking adventures around the globe. That creator could then collaborate with a brand such as REI or The North Face on advertising -- or the user could create a paid subscription that fellow hikers might pay to view.
Strings seems like a social media startup that's capitalizing on people's frustrations with Facebook, which derives billions by using its users data and activity to help advertisers. But Balassanian said Strings is really more of a content publishing platform than Facebook competitor.
“When I think about the way that I interact with people, I tell stories,” he said. “I’m not just one guy with one wall. Maybe I have many different kinds of walls I want to create – and with different people.”
Likewise, he doesn't see the number of users as the most important metric. For Strings, it's the quality of storytellers that will likely determine whether it becomes a destination for the rest of us.
“We’re taking the focus off of the people and personalities and onto the stories that bring us together," he said.
Balassanian thinks of Strings more like a TV network than a social media app. Only in this case, each user can create their own content and decide who views it and who profits from it.
“By giving influencers a more powerful system to curate content and audience… they’re more likely to bring their network to us," he said.
Strings, which has eight employees and is hiring, is funded by Balassanian and several angel investors, including Tom Arrix, a former VP of global marketing at Facebook and co-founder of Adjacency Partners, CostCo CEO Craig Jelinek and a couple Microsoft executives.
Balassanian declined to share total funding amounts, but he said it's really not that important at the moment.
"The funding isn't our issue right now. Really, the biggest thing for us is being able to get to market in a timely manner with the right product at this very opportune time," he said. "We could have $100 million in the bank, and it wouldn't change that equation. It's on us. You can't buy your way into these opportunities. You have to just deliver."
