Why MeWe Is Better Than Facebook

As is pretty obvious from the headlines over the last couple of years, Facebook and other major social media outlets have been taking a big hit. From public opinion to privacy issues, these tech giants have found themselves in quite a bit of trouble.

In 2011, Google attempted to launch their own alternative to Facebook in Google+ which by default had billions of users, at least technically. That's because you pretty much had an automatic connection to the service if you had a Gmail account. But, while the platform was superior to Facebook in many ways, and thus gained a loyal fan base, it was closed to business use and consumers on April 2, 2019. In my opinion, its failure was not the result of an inferior product but rather a lack of marketing and exposure.

When Google+ announced they were going to close, it left people who had either left Facebook and other networks or had been looking to do so for a while scrambling for another option to suit their need. I was one of them.

While I have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest... like a large percentage of their users, we like the idea of a less invasive and more open option and often only use those for marketing purposes. I started looking and found a couple of platforms that I would join but MeWe has set the standard to beat.

So what's different and special about MeWe that makes it stand out? First off, the fact that the platform is making its mission to not spy on you is refreshing. It's all about privacy. They even have a tool that shows users how other social media networks track users and it's a bit scary. And that has been one of the biggest drawbacks of Facebook and the others for a while. So much so that company leaders have been in front of Congress over such things. And their companies have gotten intense pushback from the public.

The second thing is that MeWe doesn't seem to change things on a whim. Some of these other tools make adjustments to their layout and functionality with little or no notice, making them hard to adjust to.

Not being bombarded with ADs, the lack of fake users and censorship issues have all become some of the main reasons that according to azbigmedia.com and prnewswire.com, MeWe has become the top trending social media site. And it grew in users by more than 400 percent in 2018. It is projected to grow at twice that rate in 2019. By March 2019, the network had more than four million users.

The layout of the platform is simple and clean, not cluttered and confusing like some of the other guys, and you don't have to worry about all those third-party applications or restrictions on your content. You can create pages and groups and are unlikely to come across the whining and ranting that have become the norm of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They also have a solid mobile app.

It seems like MeWe is in some ways reinventing the wheel of social media. They are trying to back to the basics, similar to when Facebook started in a college dorm in 2004. It's all about communication and community, none of this other garbage. The platform allows for just enough subtle customization so that users can express their individual differences, but still keep some things uniform in look and feel. Basically, they hit the target head-on in regard to design and usability.

A few months into using the network, I am really enjoying it and as such, I would encourage anyone who is interested in something different and refreshing to check it out for themselves.