Five months ago, I learned about a new social network claiming to be built on the principles of Privacy by Design (PbD). Interestingly, it was designed to work specifically for localised networks. Naturally, I was curious and got in touch with the founder, Geoff Revill, for more details.

So what exactly is it?

You can define the Krowd as a dynamic, app-based social network limited to a specific location such as a conference, baseball game or university campus.

Once a user has installed the app, they set up their Persona, and determine which parts they want to be public, which parts are only shared with those in their immediate vicinity (their local Krowd) and how they want to interact with other users. Users can have multiple Personas, including Business, Social and Student. These can all be configured independently and the user can switch between Personas at will. This is useful if you use the Krowd at events. For example, you might want to use your Business Persona for a conference but your Social Persona for a night club or your Sports Persona at a ball game.

The Krowd has two types of networks: the local Krowd is based on your WiFi location, while the public Krowd can be seen by all the Krowd users irrespective of location.

But the real potential of the Krowd exists at the local level.

There are multiple ways to interact. Krowd Feed, for example, is a dynamic conversation available to everyone locally. Imagine a local Twitter feed where only those in the local vicinity can post updates, ask questions and organise meetups.

Additionally, Klogs allow users to share information and images like a regular blog. Again, these can be published locally or publicly and each post can be linked to a specific persona type.

I speak at conferences several times a year. One of the most frustrating aspects is feeling isolated by not knowing many of the attendees. With the Krowd, I can setup my Persona, join the local Krowd and instantly start browsing the personas of other members of that Krowd. When I find a persona that interests me, I can follow them or send them a message.

Plus, as a speaker, there is never enough time to answer all questions and inevitably there is a Krowd (see what I did there?) of people waiting to speak to me after the session. By creating Klogs, I can give attendees more detailed information. With Krowd Feed, people can ask me questions in real time or in advance of my session so I can address them during the presentation, making it far more dynamic and relevant to the audience.

Attendees can then leave feedback or comments, which I can then reply to, developing a far more comprehensive conversation than most conference environments allow for.

I can see huge potential for other events and venues as well. University campuses could have active and vibrant Krowds. Imagine “Fresher’s Week” where guides can engage with the Krowd to help new students who have questions about where to eat or where to register for their classes.

The potential for localised social networking is vast, and this is a market where I have yet to see any significant growth. The Krowd is the first app I have come across which meets the needs of this type of environment.

Obviously, privacy is something I take very seriously, and of course, I would not be writing about KrowdThink and their app if there was not a privacy angle.

With the Krowd, only people in your local Krowd know where you are because they are on the same WiFi network. Even KrowdThink servers do not know your location and because all local Krowds are ad-hoc,they exist only as long as there are KrowdThink users connected to the WiFi network. Once everyone leaves, the Krowd Feed disappears.

KrowdThink does store a seeded hash of the WiFi identifier and messages sent to the local Krowd Feed are stored on their servers for a few minutes so there is a cache of messages available for new users who join locally.

KrowdThink has also built privacy into its messaging platform. A copy of the message is stored on the sender’s device and an encrypted copy is stored temporarily on the KrowdThink servers, but as soon as the message has been opened by the recipient, this temporary copy is deleted. There are plans to clean the backups too to keep this ephemeral data from being recoverable.

Delete means delete. When you post a public Klog, other users are able to ReKrowd (think retweet) that Klog across their network. As the author of that Klog you retain complete control. Plus, if you delete it in the future, that deletion cascades across the entire Krowd network, including any ReKrowd references.

On top of all these coherent privacy policies, KrowdThink state they will not data-mine posts or share any information with third parties. KrowdThink are also transparent with their business model and how they intend to monetise the network.

This is refreshing because instead of choosing to sell their users, they are considering a number of options, including a subscription-model, and more importantly, sponsor- and advertising-models based on opt-in instead of opt-out.

But most importantly—and what I consider to be one of the most fundamental principles of Privacy by Design—the entire system is user centric.

It is not a platform for collecting vast quantities of behavioural data to be packaged and sold to the highest bidders; it is not a platform which is focused on the social graph of its users or how to monetise their content and relationships. The Krowd doesn’t determine how your content is shared or who it is shared with—that control is completely in the hands of the users. The users are the customers not the product and KrowdThink’s statement regarding monetisation makes it clear that they intend it to stay that way.

Krowd could use some improvements, however. One issue is the inability to search for other Krowd users from the UI. I can go into the public Klog stream and find users, but there is no obvious method to search across the public network. Of course when I am in a populated local Krowd, users appear in that Krowd which is fine, but given there is a public network as well, it would be nice to be able to search for users across it. This would allow me to put my Krowd username in my signature file and various other social network profiles.

I can only applaud KrowdThink’s efforts to develop a technology in a way that embeds privacy and security at the very core. They have developed it with a principled focus on privacy as their keystone instead of it being an afterthought or inconvenience, and they have succeeded in their mission to create a privacy-enhancing solution.

I look forward to seeing how it develops in the future and hope to see lots more people using it at the events I attend. I have already started to recommend it to the organisers of the events I regularly speak at. I know that KrowdThink are already working on and testing new features to make it an attractive platform for event sponsors and managers, including Krowd walls which stream the local Krowd Feed to public displays across a venue. I look forward to seeing how these features develop as well.

photo credit: IMG_0257 via photopin (license)