Full Page "Dear Facebook" Letter In The New York Times from MeWe, the Competitor Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Name

NEW YORK, May 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Memorial Day Weekend 2018 – Facebook competitor MeWe, in its first-ever advertisement on any medium, took a full-page in the New York Times on Sunday, May 27^th. MeWe's "Dear Facebook" letter is a direct response to Mark Zuckerberg's letter ad on March 25^th, and a response to Zuckerberg's refusal to name a Facebook competitor in front of Congress. 

Facebook has known about MeWe since the next-gen social network announced it was fully live at SXSW in 2016. MeWe was awarded Start-Up of the Year Finalist for Innovative World Technology. Today MeWe is growing at 25% per month and is about to surpass 2 million users. Yet when questioned "is there an alternative to Facebook in the private sector?", by Senator Lindsey Graham in front of Congress, Mark Zuckerberg refused to name MeWe. Last month MeWe ranked #1 in Google's Play Store for trending social apps and earlier this year was the #1 downloaded social app in Australia.

Says MeWe founder Mark Weinstein, "MeWe is the #FreshStart people worldwide are looking for. We put the dark side of social media in the spotlight and say 'no more – I'm out!' At MeWe, members are customers to serve, not products or data to sell."

Today's consumers want to support companies that share their values. 76 percent of consumers say they would boycott a brand whose actions go against their beliefs. MeWe is the social media disruption the world desires. On March 21^st, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, tweeted about MeWe saying "Yes there is more than one social network . . ."

To drive awareness to MeWe's mission, the company also deploys the hashtag: #Not4Sale, and the MeWe #Not4Sale video.

Engineered with Privacy-By-Design

Engineered with privacy-by-design, MeWe has no ads, no facial recognition, no spyware, and a definitive user Privacy Bill of Rights. MeWe members enjoy total control over what they share along with full ownership of their content and data. The next-gen social networking platform has no newsfeed or content manipulation, common on other social media platforms. MeWe members see every post, chat, comment, etc., made by individuals and groups they are connected to, in true timeline order with no interference.

Outstanding Awards and Recognitions

MeWe was awarded Start-Up of the Year Finalist for Innovative World Technology at SXSW in 2016, and has been honored as one of the Best Entrepreneurial Companies In America by Entrepreneur Magazine. The company is listed in the 2018 Future Trends Institute report as "one to watch."

MeWe Founder a Leading Privacy Advocate

MeWe founder, Mark Weinstein, is a leading privacy advocate in the age of information and IOT, and one of the early inventors of social media. He is listed as "one of the top minds" in online privacy and has been recognized by the Ontario, Canada government as "Privacy by Design Ambassador." Weinstein has been discussing this topic for several years, and has appeared in multiple outlets including PBS, FOX NEWS, CNN, USA Today, Huffington Post, The Mirror (UK), The Nation, Forbes, and others.

• PBS in 2018: "The idea that Mr. Zuckerberg has that the world should be an open place, where everybody knows everything about everybody, is absurd, and it's dangerous."
  
  
• Huffington Post 2016: "Facebook spies on its members and assigns political labels to them based on what they see them do. It's time for us to take action!"
  
  
• CNN in 2014: "Facebook is tracking Americans on 1,200 of the top 2,000 sites in the USA. There's a war on privacy and it's time to fight back."
  
  
• Fox News in 2012: the day before Facebook went public: "More than half of Americans think Facebook is a fad. Privacy is the next big wave on the Internet."

How MeWe Makes Money

MeWe is free for members because privacy is not something anyone should ever have to pay for. All the great features that people love in social media and none of the BS are free and standard on MeWe including: private 1:1 and group chat; private and open groups; disappearing content; custom camera with Gif creation; live voice and live video; next-gen voice messaging; personal social cloud; custom group profiles; and much more.

In addition there are optional special features including extra storage (8GB is free, and 50GB is $4.99 per month), Secret Chat (like WhatsApp only without tracking) for $.99 cents per month, Custom Emojis at $.99 cents a packet, plus MeWe Pages (coming soon) at $1.99 per month, and special games exclusive to MeWe members. 

Revenue Supercharger: In a departure from traditional "consumer-only" social media companies like SNAP and Twitter, MeWe has a sister division, MeWePRO (https://mewepro.com) for business customers. Separately available on iOS, Android, and desktop, MeWePRO directly competes with SLACK, offering an exceptional suite of fully integrated collaboration tools and security while eliminating the bottlenecks and performance impediments of internal email. MeWePRO supercharges communication and collaboration between employees inside any organization or project, and costs less than $75 per year per employee. MeWePRO is free for non-profits and educational organizations.

Visionaries as Advisors

MeWe's Advisors include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the global "Conscious Capitalism" movement. Other advisors include Professor Sherry Turkle, academic expert on the effects of technology on human beings; Colin Sebastian, leading Internet analyst; Jack Canfield, co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul; Cullen Hoback, award-winning documentary filmmaker; Professor Phillip Rogaway, winner of the Levchin Prize for Cryptography; and Marci Shimoff, NYT Best-Selling author.

Funding

MeWe's parent company, Sgrouples, Inc., has raised over $10M in preferred stock financings from investors since 2013 to fund building MeWe and MeWePRO. The company has relied on high net worth investors for all of its funding requirements to date.

The Politics of MeWe

MeWe has absolutely no political agenda and has a straightforward Terms of Service for members. MeWe is for all law-abiding people everywhere, regardless of political, ethnic, religious, sexual, and other preferences.

About MeWe

MeWe is the Next-Gen Social Networking app engineered with privacy-by-design. No Ads. No Spyware. No BS. MeWe members are #Not4Sale. An integrated social network and chat app, MeWe has all the features people love and none of the BS, including: private 1:1 and group chat; private and open groups; disappearing content; custom camera with Gif creation; live voice and live video; next-gen voice messaging; secret chat with double-ratchet encryption; personal social cloud; custom group profiles; and much more. MeWe is available in 8 languages on Android, iOS, and Desktop.

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

SOURCE MeWe