How Yappa is Removing the Toxic Nature of Commenting with Co-Founder, Kiaran Sim

The internet is a fascinating place and over the years it has provided tremendous resources to billions of people around the world. It’s brought us closer, and it’s divided us and at the same time. People feel more empowered to make their voices heard. The problem is anonymity has seemingly eroded basic standards of kindness and decency. At least that’s what it seems like when you look at the comments section on blogs, social posts, and more.

“The way of communicating online is a massive problem, and it affects our mental health. It affects how we see ourselves and our confidence levels and, and everything about it. It's just this constant cesspool of just the worst parts of humanity. And we wanted to really try and solve that problem. And that's where Yappa differentiates itself.”

Meet Kiaran Sim, Co-founder and COO of Yappa, an app that is hoping to make the internet a little more conversational, a little less hostile, and at the bare minimum, more empathetic. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kiaran discusses how their conversation integration tool monitors and censors bad actors, while simultaneously building a positive internet community and the benefits that brings to the internet as a whole. Plus, Kiaran also details the importance of keeping a clean revenue stream and more.

Main Takeaways:

• Know Your Worth: As a start-up — especially in the social media industry — you don’t want to get in the habit of relying on ad revenue as your primary source of income. Instead, figure out a constant revenue model that takes the pressure and guesswork out of your financial status. 
• If At First You Don’t Succeed: Always make sure you are listening to your users; they will guide your product in the direction that it needs to go in. For the Yappa team, that meant abandoning their initial social media app in order to integrate as part of larger programs. By listening to its customer base, and giving users what they wanted, Yappa overcame two obstacles at once.
• Taking out the Garbage: By removing the anonymous aspect of commenters, the Yappa team was able to dramatically reduce the number of inappropriate users from a traditional average of 18% down to 2%. When users are forced to verify their identities rather than hide behind accounts and usernames, an authentic community of like minded users can form without fear of anonymous online abusers.

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This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.