The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – iFollow – New Instagram Snapchat Hybrid App & Interview with CEO Jonathan M. Viverette

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

iFollow - New Instagram Snapchat Hybrid App & Interview with CEO Jonathan M. Viverette Check it out at: https://bit.ly/31vWV0l

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast and brilliant people we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in be sure to give us a like subscribe to to us on YouTube. You can see the

video version of this conversation at youtube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, and thecvpn.com. Refer to all your friends, neighbors, and relatives. Hey, lately I've been playing with this really cool app. It's a social media type app. We'll get into the details of it.

It's called the iFollow app. We've been playing with it, and today we have. It's called the iFollow app, and we've been playing with it, and today we have the CEO and president of iFollow on, Jonathan Vivaret. We're going to be talking to him about the app and why he built it and some of the background on it, and this should be a pretty cool conversation. Jonathan, early in his adolescence life, joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004 as an opportunity to serve his country, develop leadership abilities, and be part of a noble cause. From there, Jonathan attended Governor's State University in University Park, Illinois, where

he studied computer software programming and focused on computer science. He graduated in 2015 with a BA in business and entrepreneurial aspirations. Jonathan started his own trucking company called V&V Express Trucking, and he's been an operations supervisor at FedEx and became operations manager at FedExGram. Welcome to the show, Jonathan. How are you, sir? Good. How about yourself today, sir? Awesome sauce. You need to send me one of my fall hats so I can wear it during the show. Definitely will. All right.

So you've launched your own social media app. Give us the dot coms first so people can start looking at it, download it, and sign up for it. You can check it out, www.ifollowapp.com. That's the letter I-F-O-L-L-O-W-A-P-P.com. Awesome sauce. And I downloaded it, installed it on my thing, and signed up. I've been playing with it, messaging people, talking to them, everything, trying to get a good feel for the app. So tell us what the app is.

It's a video sharing, picture sharing app. What we did was I created it because i took uh you know i just took things that i didn't like in other social media apps which was mainly uh like how social media apps controlled most of our privacy um and i just uh created something to put uh most of to put that control back into the user's hands itself so um that was the goal of it and uh you know i mean to get rid of the algorithms where, uh, you know what I mean? Like social media sites, um, only show, uh, if you post, like they only show you to a selected, you know what I mean? Amount of audiences and things like that. So,

uh, here at, I follow, like if you, uh, we have a model, you post more, see more. So the more you post the more you're seeing. So if you post on public stories, you're seen by every user on the app. And what would be, if you were to compare it to some different apps or maybe a multitude, because I think you may have bundled this into a few different type of competitors, what would you say it's like?

TikTok, Facebook, give us a thing of maybe what's it emerged from because you've kind of merged the best of all the worlds. Yeah, I would say it's more like Instagram because we go off of like we like the quality content of your photos. So it's the purpose of it, like I said, is to get people more exposure to the, you know, I mean, to to the world. And so we people will view you more off of the quality of the content that you post um so if you post you know i mean nice content photos on your stories and on your page uh you know you're seeing more so it has more of like that uh you know that more of an instagram type of

quality okay that's a great that's a great place to compete with them and then uh you've got messaging on it so people can message other users and talk back and forth. I messaged a few people asking what they thought of the app. And then there's something called trendsetting on it, which seems to be a theme. What is trendsetter? Okay, so the trendsetters came from, like I said, I took things that I didn't like in other social media apps. So I wanted to give every user on this app, put them in a mindset of being, you know what I mean? Everybody's a trendsetter. Not only, you know what I mean? Like the celebrities, you know, not only, you know what I mean?

The high profile people are trendsetters, you know, everybody's a trendsetter in their own way. So this app, you know what I mean? Gives users the access to the, to the, to the platform to be able to, you know what I mean? Be like, Hey, I'm a trendsetter. I'm not just a follower. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not just following, you know, so, you know, and we're called I follow, you know what I mean? It's I follow, you lead, you know what I mean? Like, you lead, I follow. And it's the concept of just put everybody in the mind that everybody can do something that everybody else likes. And the trendsetters, the trendsetter anonymous is that's the field where

we display all users to every user on the app. So if you post public stories, you make the trendsetters anonymous page, no matter how many trenders you have, or no matter how many trends your picture has, or views your picture has. See, I like that. I grew up in the days with youtube where if i posted a video you know there was like a page you would go to and it would be actual people that that people like their videos like it wouldn't be manipulated like it is now where it's yeah whoever pays actually gets it um but but it was great back then because if you made a good video and people would be like hey that's a good video and they

would and they would uh and you get to see it and there was like a lot more options like there was like i think 20 or 35 on the page that were trending so you know you had more to whatever i mean youtube has thinned it down to where it's like five people their favorite people and they shove like all the traffic for the whole thing there. Yeah. I've gotten two trenders, one post and three trendies on the system. So, uh, I had some people that were, I guess, making me a trendy or something, I guess. Yeah. Okay. So if your trenders are the people who basically, um, like added, um,

added you, the trendies are the people that you've added. We're running a contest right now called the Get Active Challenge where we're challenging people to be more active on the app. We're paying the top two most active users $125 each.

Who's ever more active during this weekend during this weekend span or whatnot all right hey jonathan i gotta go because i gotta make me 125 bucks here i gotta start posting no that's awesome yeah i saw the pop-up for that and i'm like hey that's a good deal there and uh yeah so i've just been kicking the tires and trying to figure out and you've got like in the home page you've got the trending uh stories and you know just like you'd find on instagram you've got the posts of people that are your friends and then you can see notifications you can search for trenders trendsetters anonymous there's a whole mess of

trendsetters on here so this is pretty cool how when did you guys launch this thing uh we launched it on july 2nd officially so it's still brand new yes very brand new so if you you know the here's the thing that my people used to do back in the day my people my social media influencers we're notorious for anytime there's a new social media platform that comes out we like all hoard into it and because we want to be in the top like when meerkat came out i was in like the top seven because i jumped in right away and just as soon as i hear about any social media i jump in sign up start banging stuff out the way we are with content and uh you do that because usually that can give you a leg up and being in one of the top influencers in this thing. So if you're out there it's a great opportunity to jump in and,

and, you know, usually the people at the head start, you know, make it rock. My friend, I just seen, you know, she was on, I was thinking it was called Justin TV back in the day and they were the pre YouTube. And then YouTube came to her and said, Hey, you know, why don't you bring your content and your following over to YouTube, and, you know, history is, the rest is history. So, this is a great opportunity to jump into a lot of these platforms that are new and go, hey, man, I'm going to dominate and stick out, and usually with the way your thing works, you know, everyone's going to see them and follow them.

Usually, for something like this where it's in a growth stage, whoever makes the best noise is going to end up being king of the platform almost. Yeah, I definitely agree with you. That's what we've been encouraging people to get on the wave now. Once the wave is there know everybody's like oh i should have did it i should have did it you know so yeah i mean get up like you said get on the wave now because i can guarantee you uh with the way you know the way we have everything set up for marketing the promo uh within the next three to six months like it's definitely going to be you know i mean the app that that that takes off um We have some major, like, major updates, you know what I mean,

coming within the app, which we're releasing updates right now almost once every two weeks. But we have something real big coming within the next month, I would say, within the next four weeks. And once it does come, like I said, like, users do want to be ahead of the curve. And you guys are US-based, right? Yes, we are.

That's a bonus right now because we don't know if TikTok or WhatsApp. I've been watching people on TikTok freaking out like, yeah, my stuff's going to disappear. So, yeah, who knows? I guess they got 45 days, so you might as well start making your content someplace that's safe on a US-based app. Yeah, my daughter, she uses – I have two daughters, one age and 12. And my 12-year-old, she uses TikTok a lot. So now she's converting over to – I mean, of course, the iFollow.

But she sent me a post one day and it was like TikTok's being banned in three days and she sent me a post with like the crying faces like she's all worried and I'm just like don't worry about it you know we'll try to pick up some of them users for TikTok but we do we do have part of our update that's coming it is

we have a version of like what you can do on TikTok but it will be um um i don't want to give too much about it because i don't want you know i mean other people to try and pick up but we are going to give content creators um of it'll be it'll be a much nicer uh you know i mean critiqued way or but that they'll be able to do their create their content and then that that part of the app is going to be called brave video and which it'll still be with inside the iFollow app but it'll be a form of like what you can do on TikTok to create content nice content so people will be able to do short you know I mean short trailer films you

know I mean if they want to do actually create music videos on there like they will have enough they they'll be able to do it all awesome sauce so you guys founded this uh a company in 2018 you've launched here in the last month or so um i i'd seen something in my uh research about bullying where it was gonna be um i thought i saw something for bullying, didn't I? Yes. We, we try to, we try to make it cyber bullying proof. Like the, the scenario I always give everyone is, you know, like I said, I wasn't always who I am today. So, you know, I used to have, you know, I mean, friends who would have, some would have 20K followers on, on social media. And then you have another one who had you

know i mean 15 1500 and uh you know this person get 10 000 likes and this person gets uh 10 likes and i i witness a person you know tell a person like uh tell this person like you know i mean like you you're you're nobody you have you only have 1500 followers you know i mean followers on instagram and it sent that person into like a real, you know what I mean? Like that really made them feel some type of way because it's like, they felt like they weren't as important as the next person. And so what we did, that's why a lot of the practices, like I said, we allow users to control who sees their trenders or trend,

trendies list, or we allow them. If you want viewers to see who, who sees their trenders or trend, uh, trendies list, or we allow them. If you want viewers to see who, who trend, who turn your pictures or who trend give you trend views on your story. Like you can turn it on or turn it off at your, at your discretion. Um, so you don't have to worry about,

you can tell this person, you got a hundred thousand, uh, trenders. They would never know. Oh, really? So you don't have to play that game.

You know, LinkedIn does that where they just show that you have at least 500 followers and it takes the value away i mean someone like me walks around and goes yeah max at 30 they max it like 30 000 but it takes away that whole value system like you say and and where people you you know, well, you're not worth as much because you don't have as many followers, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. You have two daughters, so you probably have some safety measures

and security for women or people that are underage for the app, I guess. Yes, we do. Yeah, because that's important. I've seen, I've read, there was some New York Times or Washington Post stuff I read about these pedos that get on Instagram. And, like, little girls will make a post, and, like, within seconds, these guys are DMing them. And it's crazy. And, yeah, stuff like that just makes me just go nuts over it. TikTok, yeah, who knows that they're going to be in business.

So this gives you a great opportunity to scoop up some of their stuff. And I like the ideas. I think you have some privacy things that you've kind of done your own thing with or spent on? Yeah, I do. We give users – we also give users, like, another privacy setting. You can select how long you want to post to last. So, for normal users, we allow them to do 24 to 72 hours.

And then, like, for, like, higher profile accounts, like, people, you know what I mean? Like, of course, like, you want some of your content to be on there indefinitely. So, we give, you know what I mean? Like, platforms like yourself, you know what I mean i mean like the opportunity to post indefinite posts but you might have things that you only want to last for you know i mean like not all day or you know i mean for a certain amount of time so we give you the option to you know i mean for every post that you post like you can pick how long a post lasts for i like that it's like a merge between snapchat and you know everything else right yeah yeah i really like that because uh you know i've never

been a big snapchatter but i'm a content creator and i love longevity of content like our people are still watching our videos from like 12 11 12 years ago on youtube and and all of our media like it's crazy like i had somebody the other day liking a quote from like 2012 on twitter and i was like i was like i don't remember tweeting that and i was like oh wow i'm like how far are they going like someone's like going back to my thing i don't maybe they're trying to see if i said anything bad or something thank god especially nowadays yeah fortunately i've always been a pretty good boy um i told some i've told some jokes that uh you know we're kind of on the edge you know with

religion and stuff and people are like yeah we don't like that so you know you try and entertain people and sometimes you step on some toes um so i like this where where i can do that so you you've got the people that they love the snap chat they love the stories on instagram but you know for me i think most times you know i'd be making posts and i like those posts to stay there forever you know and people just keep consuming them or they'll see your content or you know if they're stalking you yeah gotta love the stalkers and the uh what do they call them where they just they never say anything they ever comment but they're always watching you.

So that's good. I like that. It merges the two things. That's the one thing I haven't ever liked about Snapchat. I'm like, I work too hard for my content. I don't want it to disappear. For it to just go away. Yeah. I mean, I'm not obviously posting anything controversial that I don't want an employer

or someone to find out about. But I'm still glad that I grew up in the age where there wasn't internet. controversial that you know i don't want an employer or someone to find out about but i was i'm so glad that i grew up in the age where there wasn't internet because i would have said if there would have been internet you know in social media back when i was a teenager i would have said a lot of stupid crap that i'd probably really regret today um but you know you just you just say stupid stuff when you're young so, and then back then no one knows social media was anyway. So this is pretty cool. Uh, it's a good looking app. It's easy to, to understand. It's easy to, it's very intuitive. Like I was able to go in and go, okay, here, there's two different settings,

uh, for, uh, chatting with people. There's like a, let me see if I can get to that screen. Oh, you caught that. that's a hidden that's a hidden gem we have yeah so it was kind of funny i wanted i wanted to message some people and just get their feedback on the thing and it said do you want to do you want to do a public or private message i think normal talk or private talk yeah that was it what what's the difference there so normal talk is um is our messages that they you know i mean they stay there until you or the other user who you're um who you're messaging until they remove them uh so if you if it with private talk or normal talk if any user like if

you message me if you delete them it automatically like it deletes from both of our inbox like there's no record of it or anything from. Okay. And then with private, with the private talk, you can do the same thing. But whether you delete it or not, it automatically deletes after 12 hours. Oh, so it automatically does it for you. Yeah. All right. And it just.

You use that for death threats and. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Cheater. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Cheater. No, I'm just kidding. Well, that's pretty good. It goes away. You know, I've sent messages to people that are like the wrong person,

and then I'm like, oh, man, I feel stupid. One time I sent a really funny TikTok video to a gal, and it was a joke about women that I probably shouldn't have sent. And she was really good natured. She's like, yeah, that was funny. I think it was a husband and wife thing. And I meant to send it to my guy friends who have wives. And she's like, yeah, that was funny, Chris.

She still came on the podcast. She was great about it. But, yeah, there's some times where you want to take those messages back. And most of these platforms, you can't. If you erase it erase it it says we erased it on our end but they still have it on their end you're like oh crap but uh no this is this is really cool and you hit it at the right time because you've got you know like like they say i i evidently he's got tiktok and whatsapp got TikTok and WhatsApp in his sites. Trump does and wants them put out of business. So WhatsApp is a huge messaging service, so we can do that there. And people chat.

Everybody I've talked to so far on the app has been pretty friendly, and they're posting their stuff. So I think it's pretty cool. Use some different terminology, layout, and messaging service to help protect the data of your users, and you guarantee 100% data privacy. Yes. Okay.

As you can see right now, a lot is going on with, you know, Facebook and its privacy policies and things like that. So, you know, one thing that we vow is, like, a lot of these social media platforms, they make money off of selling their data, their users' data or whatnot. And just as being, you know what I mean, like one of them persons whose data was breached before or sold before like that, you know what I mean?

Like, I just vow that that's not something that we would do, you know? Yeah. We're going to stick to it. And hopefully you won't do. I mean, right now i throw a lot of rocks at zuckerberg in fact i i'm my my uh hashtag is uh uh f-u-c-k zuck um and zuck resign um and you know i i haven't i've been very upset and of course a lot of advertisers are very upset with him uh uh allowing groups to be on that

are are destroying our society i mean you know like people play they recently got kicked the people off a lot of racist off uh groups that were on there spencer what was his name uh spencer um you know the one guy runs the nazi thing uh they had uh anti um they had denial holocaust denial groups on there um i've been in a few of the um uh what are they the the deplorables group for trump and the racism and disgusting stuff that's posted in there is extraordinary and what's funny is i early tried to call it out when it first started going, and I took pictures of some of the posts and stuff that was in there. And, you know, I have a lot of social media friends, and we're all kind of journalists, so we talk about this thing.

And so I posted my thing, and I was like, look at the heinous stuff that's going on here. Here's just a few examples. And Facebook suspended the posts. And I was like, wait, I can't post this on the public feed, but these people can post the most heinous, ugliest stuff in the groups, and it's just fine? And a lot of that's going on.

They're doing that to a lot of people. A lot of people is upset with the part of that because I know someone that they did that to. It was something going on in the group. It was some, you know what I mean, sexual, minor sexual. And they posted it just trying to expose it, and Facebook removed it, removed what they were trying to, you know what I mean, bring attention to. No, no, I was just trying to bring attention to them.

Kind of backwards, right? Yeah. And what's funny is you're like, wait, so there's a portion of the service I can get in trouble if I post this, but people can just do whatever they want. And the scary thing is there's people that, you know, like the Pizzagate thing. I mean, the dude went there to shoot up a pizza place. There's been a few other examples. I think there's been a few killings out of Facebook groups, or at least guys that were in there that got fired up with their stuff.

So it is time for a new social media thing. And I'm all for Facebook going out of business, being shut down and regulated, because I'm tired of Mr. Zuck and his little behavior patterns. And a lot of advertisers are with us. You know, they're giving him a hard time. He's starting to comply a little bit. I don't know if he's going to keep doing it. You know, he just hit like $100 billion in worth.

You know, from every news thing that we see, he doesn't seem to care much. Jax does seem to care a little bit more over Twitter, and he's trying to do the right thing as much as he can um but uh you know your your platform is very different than his than twitter it's it's really like you say more instagram yes yeah so it'll be it'll be good i i i like competition too to keep on zuck on his toes when google plus was around it kept zuck on his toes but now that he's just kind of the fat cat in town he's just been kind of yeah it's been kind of sitting back um so uh what what are some other aspects of the um salient features of ifollow um some of the other features is uh like i like I said, like I was saying, like we have a major, a lot of major updates coming within the next,

you know, two to four weeks. Um, so, uh, I don't want to put a lot of them features out there yet, but, uh, just, you know, some of the ones right now, like I said, the, uh, the, the layout of the, of the app is, is totally different. Um, you know, like we, you know what I mean? Designed it to be, you know, like, as if a person is like turning pages, you know what I mean, designed it to be, you know, like as if a person is like turning pages, you know what I mean, like turning chapters in a book or whatnot. So it's like slide left, right. You know, it's not an up and down scroll.

And we did that just to try to, we wanted to get the feel, you know, see what people think about, you know what I mean, the different orientation of an app. So we got, we did get like different feedback on it. You know, so we, that was one of the things that I like it, but it's, I know it's not what I like. It's what the users like. Yeah. So, uh, 75% of the users, you know, they like the up and down scroll. So, um, we are going to end up, you know, we, one of the updates, we are converting

it over to, you know, being an up and down scroll and which it brought, um, it allowed us to do a lot more things, you know what I mean? On the platform with, you know, what we can do on per screen or whatnot um uh so we we we have we don't have public comments um for normal accounts but like for high profile and verified accounts like we allow you all to have uh public comments because I know you post things that sometimes you want the feedback of the people. Yeah. And we did that, like I said, to try and keep down a lot of the cyberbullying and things like that, because like I can go on and make a post. And then I get, you know, I mean, get to get a thousand comments and 700 of the comments are all negative. And it's like you send a person in a spiral sometimes, you know, like I've seen it happen, you know, I mean, get, get a thousand comments and 700 of the comments are all negative. And

it's like, you'll send a person in a spiral sometimes, you know, like I've seen it happen, you know? Um, so we, uh, took that feature away from, you know what I mean? Just regular accounts. So like I said, high profile accounts and verified accounts will have the option of having public comments or private comments. You know, I like that. I, as if I was a parent with kids, I would like that because, uh, especially young girls, because they they're so, you know i like that i as if i was a parent with kids i would like that because uh especially young girls because they they're so you know they're so subjective to criticism and um and yeah there are times where i wish there was videos i mean between youtube comments but i remember one time somebody just wrote me some heinous reply on Twitter.

And I run him back, and I'm like, oh, what the heck, dude? And he goes, Twitter, this is the place where you're supposed to troll each other. And I'm like, no, dude, you don't understand. Social media isn't about trolling and hating other people. It's about the brilliant exchange of ideas

that social media is for. It's like, oh, i never really thought of it that way i'm like yeah dude like what would this world be if we all just sat around trolled each other you know like yeah that would be productive so i like that concept and maybe that's a brilliant concept because then you know just the grown-ups can get the comments and the people who are grown up can come no i guess you'll have to see how it goes. But, you know, I mean, I've had some of those. I mean, I remember one time on YouTube I was told that I should kill myself because my review wasn't perfect in their mind.

Like the whole value of my life was dependent upon a three-minute technology review video. I'm like, seriously? Like I hope you're not a parent because you're gonna kill your kid if you know you you uh spill the milk on the floor it's time to go buddy by your life is just nil i'm just like holy crap what's wrong with you man where you're where you're doing that i mean i've been told uh you have fat fingers so you must be fat well you know i always love when they do that to

me they go you're fat i have like one video where i weigh 350 pounds so i get like three uh free burger and i went to this whole uh uh free tourist trap place um so i did the video for entertainment purposes and you have all these people that go you're fat and you're like wow man you just gave me an epiphany that i had no idea i was fat like thank you for thanks for waking me up to so i like the i like the idea of maybe uh limiting those comments because then you can kind of keep it to the grown-ups or at least people that behave well you know maybe maybe that's what you could do i mean i don't mean to give you ideas this might be your idea already but maybe you can have one of those things where if people comment too crappy

then they get kicked out of the comment sections or something i don't know you know that that's a setting that we are we are we actually allow the users uh so say if uh if a person is uh you know say if you have if the person is always commenting inappropriately on something that you post you will have the option to block that person from being able to comment on your post. But they can still watch and see your post. We also have a feature where we allow users like, you know, like you can't. OK, let me give you examples on Facebook. You can see who view your profile.

I mean, who view your story. Right. And everybody can see who likes your posts and comments on your posts, right? And on Instagram, you can see who viewed your story and same thing. Like everybody can see who liked your posts and things like that. And then on Snapchat, you can see who viewed your story, but no one else can, right? So now imagine a platform where you can allow users to be able to inside of your, inside of your, your life. Like I can allow you, I could turn it on if I want you to see who views my, who view my story or who turns my posts and I can take you out of it,

but I can still see it, whether I have it on or off. So I can let you into that, you know what I mean? Into them sites if I want to. So I say that to say that not, I haven't seen a platform yet that allow a user to see every person who views their profile as a whole. Now, yeah, on Instagram, you have insights where it says, hey, you're, you reached 152,000 people, you know, but it doesn't tell you the 152,000 people who see your profile, right? So we're given an option. And it was something that I thought was unique because I always wanted to

know like, Hey, who's looking at my page? You know what I mean? Like who's looking at it. So we have a, we have a feature that where you can actually see the people who view your profile, whether they view your story or view your view, any of your posts as a whole. So if they click on your name and see your profile, would see hey jonathan vivaret looked at chris was profile nice you know i like that because one of the problems we have especially with our social

media network that we have um a lot of times on facebook is we get what we call um uh what's a good we call them like networking wormers. And what it'll be is it'll be like scam guys from like Nigeria. And what they'll do is they'll get somebody in the circle to accept them as a friend. And then they'll get in and then they'll start friending everybody in the circle. And they start getting into your thing. And then they start like stealing profiles. You've seen that stuff where you get this profile and you're like hey that's bob's profile like what's going on and they're like writing you hey this is bob can you send me some money and you're like thinking

wait what's going on and we find that and they will literally infiltrate um a whole thing i actually had a scam artist guy who was starting a business. He infiltrated our whole circle, and then he started saying, he started raising money for a scam artist business by saying that we were, you know, people were in the thing. I've talked to Chris. He's in for it. So are you in for it?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. And then people would be, hey, did you endorse this thing? in the thing i've talked to chris he's in for it so are you in for it oh yeah yeah okay and then people hey did you did you endorse this thing and dude it was like a nightmare mess um and so i like that keeping people out of the circles or knowing who all your followers are and stuff because yeah i've seen a lot of that go on and then it gets weird it gets gets like really weird. And then you got to tell all your friends, hey, man, this guy's crazy. One time I had the guy who had started, who had started, remember the revenge porn? Remember that first game out?

Yeah. And there's that one guy who did it. Somehow that guy got out of jail and he started following all of us through our worming through our friends. And they send you friend requests you accept them because you're like well if bob said they were good people they must be good people and uh yeah and then he started saying other things about my dog who's dying of cancer and and uh yeah that wasn't pretty at all but uh yeah so i like the idea of being able to regulate who can see that who can comment and everything else you can have a whole lot more

privacy controls if i was a parent i want that for my kids too i don't want to expose to some of the man some of the hateful things people say yeah yeah i definitely agree with you so do you uh do you anticipate monetizing it i know tiktok was talking about monetizing that that's one of the reasons i stay on youtube is because I get paid for it. A lot of people are like, how can you not do more on other platforms? I'm like, there's no cash. Yeah, we do. From my understanding, you know what I mean, with talking with my team, I haven't seen anyone who's done it yet.

But we will be, well, trying to be the first app, you know, as long as we can get the creators, the content creators there. Well, we will, you will, you know what I mean we can get the creators the content creators there um well we will you will you know i mean like for the content you create once you're past a certain uh a certain amount of uh followers and depending on what type of content you post you will not only whatever you get from brands you know i mean like that's we have nothing to do with that you can make as much money as from but as long as you're active on our app we will you know i mean like you know i mean have a um arrangement set up with you where we pay you so much money as well you know i mean

just for being on that app and being active on that app so not only will you get a uh you know i mean get paid from nike but you get paid from ifollow as well for doing the same that you're doing you know i mean just for being you yeah nike unfortunately doesn't take any sponsors with me i think it's because i just look so athletic um like chris we want someone who actually leaves the house and plays some sports every now and then and i'm like come on man i look good in shoes i mean does don't fat guys need cool shoes too uh anyway uh we can change that for you i have a connected nike she's the only connection um the only problem is they'll probably want they'll be like hey we need some pictures of you out using them shoes and i'll be like i can't let's like shoot them

because we review a lot of products so you know they'll be like hey we gotta see the you know you gotta run in the damn things. They're running. So there you go. What are you guys going to do with advertisers and sponsors and things? How are you guys going to handle that? Where we are? We're I haven't really, I would say we're trying to like pick them,

pick the people that we advertise with, like very, very, we're not going to advertise with every person that wants to advertise on the app. So we're, uh, picking them, you know what I mean? Like a part, like to be, you know what I mean? Like for, we only want to advertise with people who have the same type of vision that we have, you know, like we don't want to run into the same, you know what I mean, issues that they're having on all these other apps. Of course, anybody that starts a business, you know what I mean, like starting a business is because you want to make money. Our money is not good money, you know.

I wouldn't advertise with Pornhub, you know, like, you know, it's just certain things that you don't allow you know i mean you try to keep out of your platform and i just want to you know i mean try and keep this platform you know i mean like uplifting i don't want it to be turned out to be depressing or you know to be like facebook you know i mean to be honest facebook is like a news outlet you know i mean like people go to facebook because it's it's like watching the news yeah and where we don't want it to be like that we want it to be where it's you come here for to see good content. You know what I mean? To see creativity, you know what I mean?

And to get to uplift people like, hey, that's I like that photo you did. You know, like I posted a photo in front of the Hollywood sign where, you know, like I was caught jumping up in the air. You know what I mean? Like I was touching the Hollywood sign, you know? And the caption was like, I captioned it as it's almost impossible to achieve your goals. If you're not jump, if to reach your goals, if you're not jumping to achieve them. And I got so much positive feedback on it. And it's just like, you know,

that's what I want, you know, feedback, like, Hey people, you should post, you should frame that, blow it up and frame it. Like they captioned and a lot of the quotes and things i come up with is they're things that i created on my own so i just got a lot of positive feedback from it and and just like you said everybody that's on the app like i do communicate with people on there i allow people to message me i message you back you know i mean like i don't think i'm too big or i'm too good to talk to anyone or you know any, any of that, you know, I'm, you know, I mean, I, I, I talk to people and I think that's cool. So that once it does get bigger, people could be like, Hey, I actually, I mean, this guy's pretty, pretty down to earth.

He messaged me back on the app. Yeah. Who was that guy who, who was at my space? Was it Mike? It was the dude everyone wanted to see in my space. And like some people early on had talked to him and knew him. And, uh, uh yeah it was pretty funny in fact my friends early on knew jack and and uh biz and and uh ed ev ed williams

um yeah sat with him and talked to him and you know twitter was an interesting thing because twitter was a clown car that crashed into success they had no idea what they were doing until developers and users like me show them how to at what they should do with it and then they you know became billionaires so there's that story but they still for 10 years have been a clown car crashing into success um so you know thankfully you've got all this you know mileage from all these different platform creators and you've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so you can approach it where, you know, the problem back then was it was so revolutionary,

and, like, it was just the Wild West, really, when it came down to it. And so now you can look at it with your guys' app, and you can hopefully skip a lot of the failures and do a lot of the successes. Yeah. Yeah. And I like the fact of pictures. The news is so depressing nowadays. No one of the successes. Yeah. Yeah. And I like the fact of pictures. It's, it's the news is so depressing nowadays.

No one wants the news. Yeah. And if you notice, like we don't, we don't, uh, you can't post, um,

statuses on that app. You know what I mean? Like you can't write, you can't write words. You have to post a picture or video. Oh, there you go. There you go.

That's important to take and have, uh, you know, pictures are better, especially when you want to just tune out you want to look at pretty pictures see people live their lives um a lot of people do memes and stuff and and you know it's just much more interesting and then you guys have a live video on the stories, right? Yes, we have live video. Um, it's, uh, it's only integrated in, in like the stories part of it. Uh, we don't, we don't allow it from like, cause you can post, you have two separate ways you can post. Like you could post from your story on the home, on your homepage and you post on your page from your profile page. Um, so within the homepage, you can, when you're adding a story, you actually can do a live video as well. And that live video is not only publicized to your trenders,

it's publicized to the entire, all the users on the app. You know, what's funny is I've been given LinkedIn hell for two years because they can't get their live video distributed out to everybody. This is Microsoft that owns it and they can't even get liability video down. I just wrote another article.

Just put them through the ringer. So congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're better than LinkedIn at this point. For a billion years. It's like a joke. I'm just like, what's going on?

Like, your press department doesn't even want to talk to me anymore. They're just like, oh, God, it's Chris again with his articles on why we're stupid um yeah it's it's you know i saw that in google plus and it was interesting to me one of the problems with google plus was google ran it and owned it and uh linkedin used to be a public company and so they were they were the independent so they you know rock and roll and then uh then Microsoft took them over and buried them and made them a private company. It seems like when these private companies, like Google has had just so many failures

with social media apps, Buzz, Google+, I think I was in the top 12 of Google+, at one time. All these different platforms die, and it's usually because they're not independent. They've got, you know, uh, corporate oversight from a bigger monster, but yeah, it's, it's funny that you guys have it and LinkedIn can't get it. I never, I never knew that. Yeah. It's, it's something I've been giving a mail on and, uh, and, uh, and then, and then I've been seeing a bunch of crap lately with anti-masker stuff and conspiracy theory stuff. And that's one of the other big problems with, like, a lot of people are having with Facebook is they'll allow that crap to be on their platform.

And there's just some stuff that should not be allowed to be on a platform. You know, Nazism, racism, the crazy conspiracy stuff that shouldn't be on there. So especially with them being so big, like it should be easier to catch. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not that hard. I can, you can find them on the, on the internet all the time. I mean, I mean, half the time I log into my social media, I'm going in to play whack-a-mole to be like, Oh, there's another person in front of us.

Yeah, thanks for sticking your head up and posting that stupid crap you just posted because now you ain't my friend. I'm really picky at who I keep around. So any other aspects you want to plug about the iFollow app? Like I said, I just want people to be able to just be comfortable you know i mean like you know i mean come to this platform to you know i mean feel i want it to feel like a like a home you know like we call it we call it a home hub uh it's because we want everybody to feel you know i mean like connected uh to one another so you just come here you know i mean where you can post good content post unique memories share with your friends and your family and get to meet you know i mean unique people uh around the world who uh you know i mean who's not gonna you know i mean

like the degrade you you know i mean or give give you negative give you that negative energy we want it to just be positive vibes only so we know it'll be awesome yeah we know that you're gonna get some to try to come in sure but i my my team we do try and do a a great job you know i mean where we keep that off like we've had a couple of them you know i mean that they were kicked off like immediately right away so um we do monitor the app a lot uh we do watch you know i mean almost every account that's created so we do have you know so i you know we send out notifications letting people know hey if you don't upload a profile picture if you don't you know i mean like if you don't have a if your name's not up to date and

your information not up to date like we will we will blacklist you you won't be able to to be on the app just so we can try to keep that type of stuff out you know that's one of the things that i always hated about twitter the eggs you know dead accounts on Twitter, and you'll see them everywhere. I'm like, just kick those people off. And the worst thing is, is they'll lock down usernames that no one can use. Like, I have one client, he's trying to get a username that this guy has almost never used from, like, 2009. He's never used the account. I think he tweeted, like, three times. and my client's like i really would i'd pay like a lot of money to have that name um and like

they just they just let it they just let it go on forever and he's like get rid of all these eggs um i know the reason they don't is because it makes it look like there's a lot of users. A lot of users, yeah. But they're not DAUs. They're not daily active users. So it makes the platform look big, and Twitter needs all the help it can get for being behind Facebook. But it's starting to come into its own. But still, I mean, just get rid of the dead accounts, man. They can come back and

re-sign up later like whatever so you're gonna have verification uh coming up soon or you know sometime in the near future i guess yes oh we we have it now uh i think we actually you're oh we have it now and speaking of it i will get your account verified as well um okay so we do have we do have verification now hold up my driver's license here so that you can just verify uh that that is that well not what you like if uh so like a lot of the high profile accounts that's coming now like they're coming through you know i mean like pr or they're coming directly you know i mean like through myself like i dealt directly with hollywood unlocked so you know i was able to make sure they were able to get verified but your account you know i mean like once it's verified it would say verified and by your name and i have like an

uh a black diamond in the orange circle oh uh you know letting it know that hey this is a verified this person is verified or whatnot so black diamond cool i'm a kiss fan so that's cool they have a cool song called black diamond um uh i'm not a skier, though, so I'm not doing that Black Diamond or Slope. But, no, I think this is cool, and it comes at an appropriate time. Advertisers are sick of Facebook. Everyone's sick of Facebook. It's hot. I see a lot of them putting ads.

Dude, they're getting murdered in the press, and Zuck just is like, I don't give a Zuck. That word keeps going up. Yeah. And a lot of – the other thing is, too, is it's a good time because, you know, people are stuck at home, so they're looking at their computers. Like, even my podcast has been going up. One of the things that quarantine happened, I was like,

well, the great thing is there's going to be a lot of people sitting around listening to the Chris Walker show. Yeah. My YouTube videos, you know, went up, the volume and everything. I'm like, well, you know, people are, this is what, you know, the new normal. So this should be pretty cool, and I like some of the different guardrails that you're putting into the system to build a good, healthy system. And I think how you start it from the beginning is going to make a difference in how you guide it along so it doesn't turn into you know giant cesspool like 4chan or or uh you know i think 8chan i think

8chan got shut down but um yeah keeping some of that stuff out is just so important um and i think i think there's probably going to be regulations coming at least for facebook i know they're they're under scrutiny by most of the AGs in the nation because of some of their unscrupulous activity. It's a great space to be in where you guys can pick up those users and people that are sick of Facebook's PS

and other companies. That should be good. And advertisers are sick of them too, so that gives you some opportunity. If you have an in at Nike, you should get Colin Kaepernick to come on. Give him a verified account and all that good stuff. That would be huge. Yeah, it would.

That dude pulls huge everywhere, man. He kills it. I think it's funny. I think they should award him an NFL team. I'm all for that. It's just like a court settlement. He just gets one of the teams or something.

That's part of his agreement. I like him before. I used to like him before all of this stuff started going on with him. I feel like what happened with him, it's unfortunate. I feel like he should

have been allowed an opportunity to be back on, to do what he loved to do best but I stand with the people that stand with him the support he's getting is definitely big you know I asked some people and we've had some discussions on it because we've talked a lot about Black Lives Matter

and I'm like you know I wonder if someone has to sit down at the end of his career and go, was he more influential and more powerful because of what happened? Or would he have been less powerful if he'd just been a quarterback and, you know, run of the mill? I mean, he wasn't a run of the mill quarterback. I remember his pictures of him, the way he was built, you know, he worked out and stuff.

I was like, like yeah that dude i i gotta go start working out man because that dude's getting the babes and i'm not but uh no it'll be interesting to see how this develops it sounds like you have some really good intentions you want to go some good wholesome places with it and uh yeah that's that's one of the other things too that i've always been shocked about on twitter is that you can find porn on twitter and i know it's hard with something that is that big of a platform you know people unload upload it and you kind of have to wait for people to catch it but there's some accounts that will have like a whole thing and it'll just come up and i'll just be like what is that and i'll be like yeah and it's upsetting to me because I know that children are on the platform and

I'm like, this isn't something that, you know, if I had a 15 year old or 12 year old or, I mean, technically most of these platforms, they can't be under 13. Um, if I had, if I had a child on here, I wouldn't want them seeing that. Right. Especially some of the stuff that's on it's, it's pretty, you're just like, holy crap. But then you see the whole counts, like kind of whole wall of stuff. And you're just like, how did that, you know? Yeah, no, I'm not a, I'm not a Twitter user, but like, I,

I know like one of my friends, like he's on Twitter and like one of my, my late, my, my partners who work work with me she's a female you know like and she's on twitter and sometimes i catch her rolling down twitter i'm like what are you watching you know i mean like and it's literally like you said it's it's a whole page and even with with facebook like i get a lot of friend requests from these from these accounts you know i mean and as soon as you click before i friend anybody i click on their profile as soon as you click on the profile it's like hey see my uh see my content here and it's just like yeah delete it you know yeah anytime i see a cute girl like friending me on you already know i know exactly what that way just deny i try and report them because usually they they have

porn on the thing and i'm just like dude i mean this is you don't know who's on the other side this could be the kid someone under 18 and at that point you're you know i used to love watching in the day um who is that guy who would uh who bust all the pedophiles um i'm chris hansen yeah it's chris hansen the chris hansen show i used to love watching that. Oh, the Chris Hanson show, yeah. Yeah, and he would bust all those dudes. But, yeah. So, anyway, it sounds like you guys have the best intentions for this app, and it's a good time, and hopefully you can be a Facebook killer.

I'm all for that. Hope so. It's time for a new thing. They've had their 10 years. Bye. Go buy MySpace. So anything more you want to tell us, Jonathan, about what you guys have going on there at the iFall app?

We are looking for, you know what I mean, like content. Like I said, like a lot of content creators, we're looking for creative content writers as well. We're looking for, know i mean just just different people that can um you know i mean help us within the app we're trying to hire a content reviewer right now for a lot of the content that is that is posted on the app you know like most of it like it's done by like my development team now but i'm trying to take my development team off of having to you know i mean keep their eye on that and put you know i mean a specific put specific teams around it because people people do try you know like first week within our first week lunch and like we had three accounts who did try you know i mean to bring you know i mean like that that uh the bad stuff yeah the bad stuff to

the app you know and it was we we were immediately able to see it and immediately able to get it out so we are looking for uh people to you know what I mean, like be in control of that. You know what I mean? We give them access to it. And if anybody's interested, you know, they can reach us at info at ifollowapp.com. You can email us, you know what I mean, let us know what you like about the app, you know what I mean, what you want to see in the app, what you don't like about the app. You can advertise on the app right now for like small businesses. You can advertise right now for,

you know what I mean? You can boost posts and things like that for an average of $10 a day. Just, you know what I mean? Just, just let out. And like I said, your,

your profile, I mean, whatever you boost in is displayed to, you know what I mean? Our thousands of users that we have already. So that's awesome. Sauce. That's awesome.

Sauce. Well, everyone check out the app uh give us the dot coms where people can go look it up and download the app and all that good stuff uh you can check us out like i said the dot com is www.ifollowapp.com that's i-f-o-l-l-o-w-a-p-p.com we also have, we're on Instagram at the, uh, official. I follow app. Um, you can check us out on there as well. We do post content on there. Um,

we, you can like us on, um, Facebook if you like, uh, you know what I mean? I follow. Um,

but, uh, mostly you can find us at the, uh, I follow on the, I follow app itself. Uh, we only use the other platforms just to promote,

you know what I mean? To get users. So download the app, check it out. We'll get your name reserved on there and allollow app itself. We only use the other platforms just to promote, you know what I mean, to get users. Download the app, check it out, get your name reserved on there and all that good stuff. This is, like I say, this is what we always do. Anytime we see a new social media app, we jump on. I'm always real big on trying to get my name on there the way I want it.

I beat the other Chris Vosses on there. That's always important to me. I own, like, all the at Chris Voss is on there that's always important to me i own like all the at chris voss is pretty much everywhere except for the dot com some old guy had bought in it like a million years ago and then it got loose after he i guess he passed away and and i'd offered to buy it a million times but i own everything but the dot com so anytime a new platform comes up i try and capture my name on it um so it's a good time for people that are looking around. You're sweating TikTok.

I follow as an American company so you don't have to worry about getting the rug pulled out from under you. There's all these people that are over there going, oh, I'm going to lose everything. Go to an American-based app and you'll have a good chance. It sounds like you guys are doing the right thing.

Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Thanks to Jonathan for being with us on the show. You'll find me on the iFollow app. I should plug myself, huh? You can find me on the iFollow app. I have a thing there under Chris Voss. So go over there and follow me. And then maybe I'll get a verification.

I'll get like, I don't know. Go over there and trend them. I'll be in the top trending. So there you go I'll get like, I don't know. Go over there and trend them, y'all. Go trend them. I'll be in the top trending. So there you go. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. To see the live version of this, go to youtube.com.

Unfortunately, that's Chris Voss. Hit that bell, ding, notification. And also go to the ECBPN or Chris Voss Podcast Network to see all nine of our podcasts there. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be safe, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Chris Voss. Appreciate it.