About Peep

Table of Contents

1. Why make this?

Because social media should be awesome, but in practice it's usually sinister. The internet has enabled us to be connected with people more than ever before! But more and more, I see the benefit of social media is being weighed down by dark patterns meant to exploit. This is why I don't have an account on most social media platforms. I'm susceptible to infinite scrolling and time-wasting videos. I don't feel like my life can compare to the fake presentation of influencers. I don't find fulfilling connection being fostered even by the posts of people I know on current platforms.

This matches the experience I see others having. I've asked those around me how they use social media and what value they get from it. For many, it's become simple entertainment, which isn't inherently bad except that it's becoming an inhibiting time-waster. Interestingly, not many of the people I know actually share on social media. Like me, their lives don't really compare to influencers. For those who do post, I've asked if they feel like they present their "true selves". The answer is almost always "no". These things really drain any value from what I think social media has to offer!

I wish this was different. I wish I had social media that was engaging because it deepened my relationships with family and friends. I wish I could post some facet of myself honestly to a group I knew could appreciate it. I wish I could share less presentable sides of myself to a group I knew would respect me.

That's why we're building Peep. Because I want it, and I hope others want it too.

2. Who are you?

My name is Michael Edlinger (the person writing this), and I co-founded Peep with my brother, Liam Edlinger. We're programmers by trade and represent decades of professional software engineering experience between us. For better or worse, you likely won't find a ton about us online; after all, our tendency for privacy is why we're building Peep in the first place! Despite that we hope to develop a reputation for creating software and business practices you can trust.

The catalyst for building Peep was a sadness at not seeing or hearing enough about our large extended family. Liam and I grew up close to many of our cousins (literally next door!) and current platforms don't let us stay connected the way we want. Hopefully Peep will be a part in remedying that!

Here's another aspect of who we are that we hope you'll find valuable, even if you'll have to take our word for it. Liam and I have often said we "could never be billionaires". The context for that is that money has a limited motivating factor for us, past fulfilling our needs and maintaining our quality of life. Our choices would start prioritizing things besides money far before "billion" was even imaginable. We believe that this means we can create a platform that affords to be idealistic and make potentially unpopular choices that fit with our values, instead of just growing at all costs.

3. What will using Peep be like? (the vision)

Hopefully using Peep will be easy and fulfilling! It is worth noting we expect Peep to have some features that may be unusual for other platforms. These are built out of our beliefs in what makes quality interactions.

A good example is how Peep is very group-centric. We believe that people are multi-faceted. The way you talk and act is likely different with your friend group than it is with your family. Even the nickname or alias you use may be different! And we think that's normal and ok. So on Peep, you have no public profile or name. When joining a group, you set an alias that that group will see that makes sense for that context.

Adding on: Peep is really about enriching connections you already have, not widening your circle. Since you have no public profile, there's no way to search for anyone! This means that the way you join groups is via the existing communication channels you have. You would need to send a group invite via your families group chat, for example.

Don't worry about things being too segregated though! We understand that some groups intersect, and that you'll likely want some posts to be shared with more than one group. For those cases, you can share a post to more than one group, and each group will have their own comment section for each post. Your friends could be teasing your post while grandma is sincerely congratulating you and they need not conflict. If someone is a member of both groups, then they'll be able to interact with both comment sections.

There are a number of other features we have in the pipeline, and with each of them, we have in mind how they fit with the way people connect. Our goal is for Peep to be a tool used to enrich.

4. How will Peep be different?

If everything above wasn't different enough for you, then we think there's one last thing you should care about: our users will be our customers.

If you've looked at some of the features above and thought "well actually there's this other app called AwesomeAndFree and it's awesome AND free, so why should I use Peep??", then don't worry, we've heard of some of the alternatives we're competing against! And they almost always have the same crushing issue: they're "free".

Inevitably great social media platforms degrade for their users because they ARE NOT THE CUSTOMERS. If users aren't paying, then someone else is, and in practice that means that advertisers are the actual customers of social media platforms. This warps the incentives of these platforms in perverse ways, inevitably against the interests of users.

We refuse to go this route. From day 1, our users and customers will be the same. We have some ideas on how this can be sustainable, but if it's not, we're not interested.

This will likely be the biggest differentiating factor of Peep in the long run: we don't have investors requiring super-growth, and every dollar we get will come from the people we hope to serve: our users.

Ready to try a different kind of social media?