Interview With Unthink CEO and How Unthink Is Innovating Social Networking

By
Chris Voss

Unthink.com is launching the newest Social Media Network and it looks awesome! To sign up for your invite goto: http://unthink.com/

I got the opportunity to interview Natasha Dedis, Founder and CEO of Unthink and she shared with me the reasoning behind Unthink.

The key to Unthink is you have to completely “unthink” back to zero the way that Facebook and other Social Networks have been built. Natasha said that Unthink has tried to find a way to completely rebuild a Social Network entirely from the ground up. Where most Social Networks have hastily and haphazardly tried to adapt to demand, Unthink has tried to learn from their lessons and cover all the details before launching.

I’ve heard a few first impressions about the images from Unthink, that tells me people really need to get into Unthink to understand it first. It looks like a lot of info, but its beauty is the options and freedoms you have.

Unthink has given your URL a “Deed” agreement stating that this is your property and they will not interfere, force changes to your setup, spy on you or collect data to sell to advertisers about you.

Unthink has two main types of pages, Suite and Stage if you refer to the pics below. Suite is for Personal pages and Stage is for Businesses. The pages have widgets that remind me mostly of the iGoogle pages. You can expand each widget to full page or minimize to hide. A few people who just saw the initial pics I posted assume you have to have all those open. You can do what you want. It’s your page.

What Unthink has done is partnered with Brands to help pay for the service. It has a full Lifestyle section where you can identify and interact with the Brands you like, if you choose. When you join Unthink you’ll be asked to chose a Brand you would like to have advertised in the upper right hand corner of your Suite Page for the next year. For some that might sound odd, but rememeber to Unthink. This is an Ad YOU choose and its the only ad you’ll ever see on your page. Compare that to Facebook.

Now if you’re 100% against any ads for around $2.00 per year you can opt out. If you look at the pictures below you can see you’ll have many of the same features of posting and interaction you’ll find on any Social Network. Personally, I’d pay $20 a year to Facebook not to have to see all that ad noise crap.

For Identity concerned folks you will be allowed to use a Pseudonym name on Unthink. There will be an identifier to let others know you are not using your real name but your confidentiality is protected. You’ll also be able to categorize your friends like other services now and choose who and what you share with.

The Stage pages are designed for Business’ and very well thought out. They make a Facebook Fan page seem simply silly. Imagine a Business page that acts like a Fan page but where you can offer ALL ON ONE PAGE discounts, coupons, rewards, JOB LISTINGS, B2B communications and even events, etc. Not only can you interact with your favorite Brand on Unthink, you can see if they are hiring! I think its brilliant what they have done here. They’ll even have Job boards.

Stage pages are available for free but for premium features you’ll pay a bit more. Its one of the ways that Unthink helps pay for the system without unwanted ads and selling your soul to advertisers without your consent. When you interact with a Brand – YOU choose what data you want to share with them.

I’m told Mobile Apps will be coming out in the next 60-90 days along with slowly opening the rest of the site to everyone over that period. They do see themselves as a “Facebook Killer” if enough people can unthink and demand freedom. Right now they dont see Facebook and Twitter integration because of that reason, so for now no cross posting.

For gaming integration they hope to have an open API where Unthink will convert pre-made developers games to work without having to force them to specialize their games for a specific networks control. That will come in time.

There are a number of other pages and innovations I’m not privy to yet but from what Natasha told me about the Lifestyle integration it sounds amazing.

Keep an open mind on Unthink and give it a chance. Many people scream about the Facebook issues, Unthink will find out whether those people are really committed to change or just blowing smoke.