Key Sentence:
- British entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio, who sold the Summly mobile app to Yahoo at 17 for $30 million (£21.73 million), has sold his newest company on Twitter.
Mr. D’Aloisio and Tomas Halgas founded the group chat app Sphere. Sphere, connecting foreigners interested in a common theme, is for sale for an undisclosed amount and will close in November. About 20 employees will join Twitter to integrate their community functions into the social network.
The company launched a question and answer app that allows users to talk directly to paid experts. By the end of 2018, nearly 500,000 people were using this version of the platform. However, D’Aloisio said he was drawn to the community aspect of the app, which brings together foreigners interested in the same topic.
“The interesting thing is people talk a lot throughout the day, and it’s not just a conversation with their Facebook friend. But with someone they’ve never met before about something that interests them,” he told.
As a result, the app slowly starts to focus on group conversations.
Send notifications to individuals or only to those who haven’t read the message. “Many existing messenger apps are aimed at groups that already know each other. But Sphere’s goal is to unlock new dynamics and bring together people with similar interests around the world.”
Mr. D’Aloisio tell he was affect by the toxicity on Reddit, Facebook, Twitch, and Twitter. Which have received widespread criticism for fighting harassment and trolling. Earlier this year, Twitter introduced instant alerts to users about the tone of their message and asked if they wanted to post it anyway.
And in September, the platform started testing its new security model. Which flags accounts with hate comments or bombards people with unsolicited comments and blocks them for seven days. “All groups have the potential to become natural communities. But most groups suffer from online communication problems that hinder community-building – things like awkward silences, off-topic conversations, and vitality.
Twitter has been working on expanding and growing its platform over the past few months. The company attempted to acquire the Clubhouse audio room app before eventually launching its similar feature, Twitter Spaces. And in May, he bought a roll of newsreader start-up that he thought would become part of his service in the future.