A responsible social network. That’s the headline of Greenworlder. What is it all about? What are the steps and the path to get there? Who is this new platform for? With fifteen employees and a recent fundraising of one million euros, the startup certainly has the means to grow. Irene Mäkelä-Brunnekreef and Jannika Salminen, respectively in charge of communication and marketing, tell us more.
Can you tell us what Greenworlder is all about?
Greenworlder is a social media for sustainability. We want to offer inspiration for people to live a more sustainable life every day, one step at a time. We do this by bringing in the best things social media offers – community, connectivity, and free sharing of content – and by switching the focus to sustainability, both environmental and social.
Our platform also brings together people and organisations who are committed to sustainable values, serving as a conversation-opening platform where everyone is on the same level and conversation flows around important topics.
Besides sustainability content produced by organisations and individual users, Greenworlder offers a dedicated section for curated sustainability news and, in the future, also a marketplace for sustainable brands.
Can you tell us what the last few months have been about?
In the past months, we have been rebranding Greenworlder, both visually as well as in terms of our brand promises and messaging. Besides this, we have been working hard on the development, UX and UI, as well as working on our funding. We are happy to announce we have reached €1m in funding and are now aiming for one million!
What exactly is sustainable media?
Sustainable media focuses on not exploiting the user. In traditional social media, the product is the user. The platforms build algorithms to keep the users hooked on the platform as much as possible at any cost. The data of the users is then sold to third parties and used for targeted advertising. A little mind is paid to mental health issues linked to the social pressure that traditional social media are creating; all that is important is that the users keep using the app.
Sustainable media is the opposite of that. When we think about the word sustainable, it means that something is designed to last. Sustainable media needs to be designed in the sense that it can last without manipulating or hurting the users, and that’s where we are aiming to. This is why we are rather designing meaningful algorithms, we don’t track our users outside the platform, and we let the user be in control of their own data and will not sell the data to third parties.
In addition, and very importantly, we focus on topics on both social and environmental sustainability; we want to make sustainability the next mainstream that can cover all aspects of life, and hope to inspire more people to find more sustainable ways of living.
How do you plan to acquire your users and aggregate enough content?
The app will be launched soon, are we’re currently collecting a test user base to become early bird users – also businesses.
On Greenworlder, content is king. Our aim is to offer content that answers the sustainability demand while still staying positive. For this, we will also collaborate with specialists in various areas of sustainability to make sure the content is relevant and good quality, as well as informative and meaningful.
We also keep the bar low so it’s easy for people to jump in and start producing content. We are currently developing user-favourite features that allow people to produce content in their preferred way, and our content categories help people to find the content they are interested in.
We are also looking to work closely with our audience, listening to them and their requests in terms of the UX, content, and all the other things regarding the platform. This is an important part of being a community – we are not just the platform but part of the community itself.
What is your target? The general public or a b2b variation of your social network for businesses?
Both. We will have a business profile for organisations and another profile for private users. On Greenworlder, we aim to have a very low – if not non-existent – bar between organisations and individual users so the conversation can flow easily and transparently.
We will also have a dedicated marketplace for sustainable brands to showcase their products and services for the sustainability-curious or committed audience. We are already getting the first companies on board to showcase sustainable alternatives to different areas of life.
What is the internal excitement of such a launch like? How does the team experience these emotions?
It’s been a long journey with the development of the app, especially since the new brand identity went live and we have taken big steps ahead with the app development. You can feel how the spirits of the team are very high. Every single one of us is extremely excited about the upcoming launch in the coming months!
For everyone who is equally excited about our launch, we recommend signing up to our reminder mail list.
