New Social Platform, WeAre8, is out to Empower Communities Amid Capitol Hill Inquiry into Social Media's Impact on Society

Join the app that gives back and turn your time on social media into positive impact on your community

NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Amid Capitol Hill investigating social media practices, WeAre8, a tech company fostering social change, is out to show America that there are healthier social alternatives. Unlike big tech, WeAre8 even shares their revenue with you for being part of the community.

Created by tech entrepreneur, Sue Fennessy, who also founded and led NY based media data aggregation business, Standard Media Index, WeAre8 is a social platform that isn't driven by toxic algorithms and has developed technology to ensure a safe environment for its people.

WeAre8's key point of difference is its transformational economic model that gives the majority of its ad revenue (60%) back to people, charities, creators and planet projects for every ad viewed on the app. Rather than ads being forced upon people in-feed, the social platform values and respects people's time by sharing the ad dollars for every completed ad-view with them, depositing micro-payments into their centralized wallet within the WeAre8 app. The app then makes it easy for people to pay these funds forward to community groups, charities, or against cost of living expenses.

Unlike platforms that pride themselves on the 'scroll time' of their users, Fennessy's intention is very different - she wants to get a dollar a day into your wallet and inspire you to go and live your best life off screen.

"The truth is that I only want 8 minutes of your time a day. And in that precious time, I want to inspire you with content you love, reconnect with your friends by seeing them in a private friends feed, watch a couple of minutes of ads, feel valued by seeing the money from watching drop into your 8Wallet and then pay your bills or 'pay it forward' to your community and charities you love."

"Our Citizens", as Fennessy fondly refers to her user base, "want to stand together and make a positive impact every day and we want to make it fun and easy for them to do just that.  This starts with our laser focus on getting a dollar a day into the 8Wallets of every citizen across America. Every single day."

Reflecting on the impetus behind WeAre8, Fennessy added, "There was a catalyst moment for me six years ago in New York, when the federal reserve came out with a stat saying that 37% of all Americans could not find $400 dollars in an emergency*.  That moment is when the depth of how broken our country and our world is, really hit her, and she realized that people need to be at the heart of the economic equation.

"This is a country that I love and have admired forever, but with the current state of our society, we don't just need to create social media that is safe for the people, but we also need to re-imagine the economic models that benefit everyone, not just a select few. "

"I saw so clearly that social media in its current state is damaging the fabric of our society and taking billions of dollars a year in ad revenue away from our people and communities. Add to this the fact that charities are needing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to talk to their own communities because algorithms often restrict the reach of every post, and I started to feel like our time on social media is making us all the largest unpaid workforce in human history. And that is not ok. So we built technology and the ecosystem to evolve that - tech to give people a centralized wallet, value them for their time and make it fun and easy to support our communities, our countries and our precious planet." states Fennessy.

In addition to being able to claim a share of money for every ad you watch, for the month of February, WeAre8 is giving people the chance to receive a share of US$20,000 in bonus wallet drops.  Money people can keep, or pay forward on WeAre8 and help support charities and community groups.

Fennessy concludes, "When platforms control people with technology – they control what they see, and how they feel, and this strips their freedom and divides our society. People's economic value is stolen, and that is exactly what has happened to the 200 million people across America that spend hours on social media every day. 

"America is the home of the free and the land of the brave and we need to stand together, reclaim our identity, our economic value and unite in a way that really can transform everything."

-ENDS-

*Federal Reserve, 2022 Economic Well-being of U.S Household Survey

Sue Fennessy, Founder and CEO of WeAre8 is available for interview opportunities.

Download now from Apple App Store or Google Play.

What sets WeAre8 apart from other social communities?

• WeAre8 is a social platform with no anonymity and toxic algorithms and is out to democratize how social citizens, charities and climate change projects benefit from advertising.
• WeAre8 features two content feeds, a public feed called the 8Stage and a private Friends Feed. The 8Stage features content from creators, world class publishers like BBC Earth, PinkNews, LadBible, Hello!. The Friends Feed allows you to see content only from your approved connections.  
• WeAre8 enforces a positive social media sentiment with high levels of moderation from human teams and AI moderation to create a healthier social community. WeAre8 actively encourages its Citizens (what Users are known as on WeAre8) to spend more time off screen through in-feed prompts
• Advertising on WeAre8 is opt-in, not forced upon people in a content feed and is only shown when a person agrees to watch the advertisement. For every video watched, 60c in every ad dollar is shared with people, charity and climate change projects. Once a video is viewed, the micropayment is placed in people's 8Wallet. Money can then be paid forward to charity or cashed out of WeAre8 via PayPal.
• As it's an opt-in model, there's zero waste on a brand's digital investment and every campaign is carbon neutral in partnership with Ecologi.
• Recent findings from audience insight company, Lumen and emissions data agency, Scope3, found that WeAre8's ad model achieves a staggering 67 times* more attention per gram of carbon emitted compared to a mainstream platform like Instagram. *2023 Lumen Study.
• WeAre8 is a B-Corp certified business, which means it operates at the highest level of social and environmental performance. In 2023 WeAre8 pledged it support behind the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, as a signatory on the 'Inspired Internet Pledge', an industry-wide initiative to make the internet a safer and healthier place
• WeAre8 is available to download in the UK, Australia and the USA and  redirected more than US$2,000,000 back to the 8Community in 2023.