Our customer not our product

Andrew Curnow
3 min readMay 8, 2020

--

These days social media can be an anxiety inducing habit and this is often driven by site metrics that typically serve to try and quantify human relationships.

At Miit we wanted to address this by demetricating our network. That means we don’t display the number of friends, comments or likes you get. No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on the quality of those interactions. We’ve also taken some other steps to try and bring the focus back to where it matters — on real human relationships.

You can’t just follow people you don’t know.

To interact with someone on Miit they either need to be near to you, or be in your phone contact list. You can’t just follow people from around the globe because they’re famous or have the body/car/lifestyle you wish you had. Miit is about interacting with the real people in your life.

There’s no public platform for bullying or shaming.

Comments on Miit are private and can only be made between friends so if someone has something to say to you they can only do it directly to you, not for the world to see. You can’t be tagged in anyone else’s posts or comments either.

Real people. Real connections.

We’re working hard to ensure that the people you meet on Miit are who they say they are, so that you can feel comfortable in using Miit to meet great new people you might not otherwise run into. What you’re not likely to find on Miit are fake profiles, fan pages, click bait, or ‘spam’ clogging up your feed.

Data & Privacy

This philosophy extends to how we view your data and privacy. These days everything you do online is measured, monitored and monetised. It is impossible to escape when the very best programmers on the planet are being focused on how best to advertise to us. Our identities and behaviours are being sold to the highest bidder.

We don’t sell anything to third parties — no data, no meta-data, absolutely nothing. We are a social utility, not an advertising platform. We don’t even have ads.

You are our customers, not our product.

On Miit your content is your own. When you leave you can take it with you or we’ll delete it for you. And you can delete your account. Not just deactivate it.

Although really, why would you want to?

What We Track

At Miit we track only what we need to to deliver you a great user experience. A full list of all the actions and behaviours that we do track is listed below along with explanations of why we do. Remember you can delete all your data at any time.

We track your interests.

How: Manual selection via your profile page or when you create a Miit, plus hashtags you use when posting a story and keyword image analysis.

Why: So we can match you with other people who share your interests because these are the kind of people you’re more likely to want to miit in real life.

We track your actions in the app.

How: Counting sessions, shared stories, created miits, RSVP to miits, bookmarks, reposts, comments, chats, created group filters, modified group filters, added links, sent friend requests, responded to friend requests and reported content.

Why: To help us understand what you love and don’t love about the app so that we can build a better user experience.

We track the basics.

How: The information you give us like your name, email, phone number, the service you signed in with, other services you connect to to Miit and the country you sign up from.

Why: To help us understand better understand who you are and how we can improve our service to you.

If you would like more information on how we use your data you can view our Privacy Policy.

--

--

Andrew Curnow

Founder of Miit. Interested in breaking down barriers to human connection.