At at time when existing social media giants face government scrutiny, calls for misinformation control, privacy and safety from harassment, one Portland entrepreneur sees the time as ripe for a new social media and content platform.
Called CHNL (sounds like channel) it’s the brainchild of longtime Portland software developer Shannon Atkinson. It’s designed from the ground up with privacy at the center and a focus on what people want from a service and are willing to pay for, instead of what advertisers want.
Atkinson aims to address the friction between consumers and the business models of current social media.
CHNL will offer video, audio, live streaming and on-demand, secure communication with friends or connections to influencers, and tools for content creation. Atkinson, who was most recently a senior test automation engineer at Salesforce, has two decades in software working at companies such as Zapproved, Tile, Cvent and Nike.
He’s been building CHNL full time for the last six months, though he started formulating the idea more than three years go. He has much of the core functionality built, such as authentication and user groups, and is building the transcoding feature for the live audio and video. He plans to have a beta version of the product out by the end of the month.
He already has a waiting list of 14,000 people ready to sign up when the beta is available, he said. People can sign up on the company’s website to get on the waiting list, and if they invite others they can move up the list.
He is building each of the features in-house to control the functionality. He is working with a user experience contract team in France to build the user interface. CHNL requires people to authenticate with real names. There can be pseudonymity on the platform, but the company will know who is behind an account.
“If you want to be in a walled garden to communicate with each other, where you know everyone is real, there is no ambiguity in what people say on the platform” this is the place, he said. “There is a want for a platform that doesn’t sell your information. Our focus is on getting users that want to escape the echo chamber and communicate with real people.”
Community standards and moderation will be part of the platform.
“The way we are looking at it is that individuals will be held responsible for what they say on the platform,” he added. “If they are inciting things they will get booted.”
The company has a freemium model with basic functions free and then premium features are a monthly subscription of $5 for regular users and $15 for content creators. By relying on subscriptions and not advertisers, Atkinson is focused on the people on the platform as customers and not the product.
In a pitch introducing CHNL he noted that Twitter is rolling out a subscription product and subscription streaming services have taken off, as industry trends toward subscriptions for social media and for content consumption.
One of the premium elements for content creators is a feature called Preflight. It integrates with Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere and allows content to be viewed before it goes live and reviewed for potential violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA.
“The selling point is giving users and customers features they can’t get anywhere else,” he said. “It’s the ability to maximize the monetizing of their work.”
So far Atkinson has self-funded the startup. He has had some early discussions with investors but they all want to see a beta product before any further discussions.
He noted that DMCA violations are a growing problem for creators on other streaming platforms. For example, PC Gamer noted in June that Twitch was being inundated with DMCA takedown notices over unlicensed music.
Atkinson, who has lived in Portland for almost 20 years, has tapped local and national startup resources. He is part of the most recent cohort of the Portland Incubator Experiment and participated in the TiE XL Bootcamp. He has also been part of the group Founder Gym.
With a handful of companies dominating the social media landscape it’s tough for challengers, but that landscape may be at an end.
“Perhaps most importantly, it’s the timing of the concept CHNL is building,” said Rick Turoczy, general manager of PIE. “When you look at what’s happening with things like iPhone privacy and GDPR, it’s clear that folks are tired of having their activity and privacy used as a means of generating revenue for corporations. CHNL’s focus on privacy and their steadfast intent to be a trustworthy steward of personal information makes the timing of their solution impeccable.”
