“In the tech world, people crash and burn quickly, but the idea of these controlled micro-communities is something that will persist,” Eichhorn says.

Some of the most important objectives we have been evaluating are portability, scale, and trust. Portability allows people to keep their social life intact even if they switch providers. Scale allows people to participate in global discourse. And trust is created by giving people insight into what services are doing with their data and how... See more