YurOn: The Antidote to Social Media is Crowdfunding!
Social media is leaving us more isolated, polarised and unfulfilled than ever before. YurOn connects people in a collaborative and curiosity-driven way as a remedy for relentless and unfulfilling scrolling.
CEO Marine Mallinson has managed multiple international ventures in social media and data software and was inspired to create YurOn as a result. “Social media is making us miserable,” she notes. “YurOn is fixing that.”
YurOn’s team wants to expand the conversation, so for the first time, investors can own a piece of YurOn, with crowdfunding platform Seedrs offering users early access. www.seedrs.com/yuron
Every YurOn thread starts with a question, which any active community can reply to, creating a collaborative video chain. Thousands of people from different walks of life —drag queens, mountaineers, activists— have thirty seconds to ignite a conversation, start an Ask Me Anything or co-create a skit. There are no filters, vanity metrics or validation-driven algorithms. Instead, YurOn thrives off its authenticity, which encourages people —not hollow profiles— to connect.
“We know there’s demand for an online space where people can be their authentic, non-filtered selves,” says CMO Mauricio, who previously worked for musical.ly (now Tik Tok) in Asia’s competitive market. “At YurOn, we reward curiosity with the community.”
And it’s working: users spend more time on YurOn than Twitter per day and have created more than 5,000 videos with 100,000 views. In addition, a significant 17% of users continuously upload content, with 32% of accounts using YurOn a month after signing up.
A YurOn user said that she loves using YurOn to “see life through other people’s eyes. I’ve met ballet dancers, people who live on houseboats, environmental activists and DJs. It’s about connecting with real people living real lives —not fake, airbrushed lives that pretend to be perfect.”
And it’s growing, with YurOn developers currently creating new ways for users to monetise their threads, with a tipping feature and purchasable exclusive content. In addition, posts are asynchronous, meaning there’s no need to schedule: rather, users can connect with and grow their communities at their own pace, meaning YurOn’s potential as a creative, educational, energising and authentic app is limitless.
‘Our model is simple, notes COO Claude Schmidt, whose expertise lies in predictive algorithms. ‘We put users first, learn from our data, and trust our intuition.’By working with investors, the team wants to continue carving out a space for YurOn as a place where raw curiosity and co-creation rule over individualism: www.seedrs.com/yuron
