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'Feedme' App That Restores Facebook, Twitter Content Wins Big at Vegas Shark Tank-Style Competition

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Liftable Media Inc., the parent company of The Western Journal, is an investor in Feedme, Inc.

Feedme, an app designed to allow social media users to wrest control of what they see away from technology giants, came away the winner in a Shark Tank-style competition at this week’s FreedomFest in Las Vegas.

The conference, designed to celebrate personal liberty, included an appearance by Kevin Harrington of “Shark Tank” and a competition for $100,000 in Amazon Web Services prize money.

Feedme emerged victorious with 27 percent of the audience vote, followed by 24 percent for Hotel Communication Network and 21 percent for Launch Cart.

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The Feedme app’s business plan calls for aggressive growth, but the plan is rooted not just in good business, but also what the app’s pitch sheet outlined as a crisis of freedom on social media.

“Facebook and Google control the news and information you see, often suppressing content that does not match their ideology,” it said, adding that “70% of people distrust social media and can’t get content they want. People want a simple way to get online information from multiple sources.”

The pitch sheet noted that what began as a response to the 2016 elections turned into an overreaction.

“After being accused of aiding President Trump’s election, and facing congressional investigations, Facebook removed most of the news from people’s feeds. Most online publishers saw significant drops in traffic, and up to 15 million U.S. users left Facebook,” the Feedme pitch sheet said.

Do you think social media companies censor the news they don't want you to see?

The result, however, was not more freedom, but less.

“A massive void opened in the online news and information universe,” the pitch sheet said.

The Western Journal and other media outlets have documented how algorithm changes made by Facebook since the 2016 election have negatively impacted online news traffic, particularly to conservative sites such as Breitbart, The Daily Wire and TheBlaze.

Put simply, though a user has liked and followed various news sites, Facebook has restricted the content seen from those outlets.

Feedme pointed out that the need for an app to allow a free and open flow of information is critical with the 2020 elections nearing.

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The pitch sheet explained the Feedme is designed to aggregate and customize news feeds from websites and social media, and then work the way a user wants it to.

“Feedme learns what you like and helps you build your perfect superfeed, but always gives you total control over your algorithm,” Feedme’s pitch sheet said.

“The content you want is still out there, and with Feedme, you see what you want to see, which puts users and publishers at ease.”

“Feedme is a first-of-kind superfeed app,” Feedme chief marketing officer Erin Brownback has told The Western Journal.

“What that means is it brings feeds together from places you have been following content for years,” Brownback said.

“So that means all of the work you’ve done of curating the perfect group of people — public figures, brands — that you want to follow over the past years, that will automatically sync with Feedme and you will be able to decide if you want to see that content in that platform, just the way that you want to see it,” she said.

CORRECTION, July 22, 2019:As originally published, this article stated that Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” was present at the conference. He was not, but the program’s Kevin Harrington was in attendance.

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Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Jack can be reached at jackwritings1@gmail.com.
Location
New York City
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics, Foreign Policy, Military & Defense Issues




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