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We Asked Jimmy Wales Why His Social Network Is Better Than Twitter

TPO wants to be a “meaningful” social network.

Another week, another social network launch, except this one is chaired by a guy who knows how to internet: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Wales is executive chairman of The People's Operator, a mobile phone operator in the UK and now US that just launched an online community, TPO. The social network sets itself apart with its focus on charities and causes, which users can follow and directly donate to through the site.

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The beta version is like a stripped-down Twitter, allowing you to post updates and photos and follow other people. You don't have to follow charities, though that's the vision; when I went on the site today, a sidebar of "most popular" topics included #Africa and #Homeless.

It's an unusual model, relying on subscribers to the mobile network—which also incorporates charitable giving in the form of a percentage of your bill going to an elected cause—to support it, rather than advertising.

I caught up with Wales to find out more about why he thinks the world needs another social network.

MOTHERBOARD: In your own words, what is your new social network, TPO?
Jimmy Wales: TPO is a new online community and ad-free social network. It is also a giving platform, so people can donate money to charities and we don't take any commission on that. And this is all supported by the phone service, where 10 percent of your bill goes to the cause of your choice, and 25 percent of the company profits go to charity.

So why would people want to use the social network?
I think there are a few reasons. One of the things is that it's an ad-free social network, and the other thing is that we hope people use it to promote causes that they really care about. I think a lot of people want to have a meaningful online life and meaningful online experience, and if they can support something they really care about through theirsocial media as part of their day to day activity, they can do that.

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"This 'clicktivism' concept is one of the real drivers of my thinking here."

But we're a general interest social platform, so people use it the same way they use any social platform, meaning sharing things with their friends and family, uploading photos—all the normal things people to do.

In your introduction you described TPO as "similar to Twitter but better." How is it better?
TPO is better than Twitter because it's based on something meaningful to people: raising money for a cause they're passionate about. We think for a lot of thought leaders and influencers will find that very interesting. We're ad-free, and there's no 140-character limit.

So it's linked to the phone operator; it doesn't have any ads, and you don't take any commission from donations. How does that work?
If you sign up for the phone service—which you're not required to do, the social network is freely available to everyone—the phone service basically subsidises the social platform.

The business purpose of all this is, we say to you, Look, you can take your existing mobile provider and they'll spend more than 10 percent of your money on TV commercials, billboards et cetera, or you can switch to TPO and we'll spend it on something you care about, but what we want you to do is spread the word—tell other people, word of mouth. We want you to tell your friends, tell your family, get them onboard, and the social network is just an entry point to that community of giving.

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What other social networks do you use? How do you expect to use this one differently?
Well, I'm just like any other person, I use a variety of things. I just recently got on Instagram, though I'm not a big user of Instagram [Ed: I searched for his account and it looks like he has 355 followers including me].

How I'll use this one differently? I think the big thing I want to be able to do is to support causes I care about and to do that I can use this platform. It's a seamless experience for people to come on and donate to something I'm asking people to donate to.

Jimmy Wales' profile on the site. Image: TPO

Obviously there's a focus on charities and causes—what are your thoughts on online efforts and the idea of "clicktivism"?
One of the things that is interesting, this "clicktivism" concept is one of the real drivers of my thinking here. One of the things when we go out to causes, they tell us, "We've got 500,000 followers on Facebook but what does it really mean? We're not able to raise money this way."

The idea here is to actually make it possible to facilitate good, solid funding at very low cost for causes, so that all those people—they click like on Facebook and that's fine, but it doesn't actually do anything. Instead, here it's an integrated experience to click and donate money. We hope that we actually give return on investment for causes so that they can find their social media presence much more meaningful.

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A lot of those causes are global. Do you think people in developing countries access the internet in a different way?
The phone service launched in the US and UK and the social network just launched yesterday globally, and we're already seeing a lot of people come onto the platform from all kinds of different places. This morning I had a message from someone saying, "Can we get Latvian and Russian language please?" We've had people from India, people from all kinds of places.

"I think the internet is going to break down this perception of people in Africa as being alien and different."

In broader terms, in some ways of course people use the internet differently in the developing world. It's much more mobile-centric there. But in terms of what we're seeing as an industry trend, when people come online for the first time what they do is all the normal things that we all do.

I think the internet is going to break down this perception of people in Africa as being alien and different. They're actually just human beings like us and they like to share funny cat videos and do all the great things that people do online.

So what are your thoughts on projects like Facebook's internet.org?
I generally think anything—this is putting on my Wikipedia hat for a second—anything that allows people in the poorest part of the world to get access to educational materials at a price they can afford, which is zero, is an important humanitarian effort.

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Another issue you've spoken out on before that's very relevant to social networks is privacy and surveillance. How do you deal with that on TPO?
We follow all security best practices. We want this to be a secure and safe place from day one. We're HTTPS because I do think security is really important. I think the real key is to give people the ability to set their privacy settings. You can either share things publicly, privately—there's a lot we understand these days in terms of what people want in balancing privacy and openness.

What changes or developments do you see in the near future?
On the roadmap we've got a lot of different features. We're going to have a native Android and native iOS app coming out in the fall. Because one of the things we want people to do is be able to raise money for a cause, we're going to have things like an event invitation mechanism so you can say, "I'm having my birthday party but in lieu of gifts I'd like to be able to donate to a cause." That's on the roadmap for the fall.

The social network is in beta, it's very straightforward and functional at the moment, but there's a lot of features I've got ticking away in my mind.

And why do you think this site will succeed where similar projects in the past haven't really taken off?
From the time I've been in the company, these guys started telling me about the project and I started looking around—I don't think there has been anything similar. What we're doing is something new and unique, bringing together all the core tools of social networking to allow people to do something that's meaningful with their time in terms of raising money for something they're passionate about. I haven't seen anything really quite like this, and certainly nothing with this innovative business model where we cut out all the marketing and use word of mouth to grow the business.

There's another thing here: it's not the way I think, about what other people have done. I build something that I like, and I hope people like it.

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.