Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:57PM   Printer-friendly

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Squad, the 'anti-bro startup,' is creating a safe space for teenage girls online – TechCrunch

Squad, an app that allows you to video chat and share your phone screen with a friend in real time, has tapped into a demographic clamoring for a safe space to gather online. Without any marketing, the startup has collected 450,000 registered users in eight months, 70% of which are teenage girls. So far this year, users have clocked in 1 million hours inside Squad calls.

“Completely accidentally we’ve developed this global audience of users and it’s girls all over the world,” Squad co-founder and chief executive officer Esther Crawford tells TechCrunch. “In India, it’s girls. In Saudi Arabia, it’s girls. In the U.S., it’s girls. Even without us localizing it, girls all over the world are finding it.”

“We want to be a place where girls can come and hang out,” – Squad co-founder and CEO Esther Crawford.

Crawford describes Squad, which she’s built alongside her co-founder and chief technology officer Ethan Sutin, as the “anti-bro startup.” Not only because it’s led by a woman and boasts a cap table that’s 30% women and 30% people of color, but because she’s completely rewriting the consumer social startup playbook.

“We are trying to learn from the best in what they did but get rid of the shit,” Crawford said, referring to Snap, WhatsApp, Twitch and others. Twitch, a live-streaming platform for gamers, has become a social gathering place for Gen Z, she explains, but like many other communities on the internet, it’s failed its female users.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:57PM (5 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:57PM (#878425)

    Where young girls can have their own safe place... But without money or true privacy... Separate from the men... But equal...

    The 2019 Virginia Woolf award for female empowerment winners right there.

    --
    compiling...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:32PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:32PM (#878508)

    The irony is that women used to have safe spaces where the patriarchy was responsible for ensuring their safety, but previous generations of women were like screw this, we just want to have fun.

    Despite what these women claim, men are actually significantly more likely to be assaulted by random strangers than women are.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:36AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:36AM (#878702)

      What an incel.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @09:28AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @09:28AM (#878798)

        No, it's true.
        A friend of mine kept making snarky statements about how much better it is being a male.
        She would not believe that a male can be attacked on the street by other males at any time.
        It's against the law!
        They will be jailed!
        It's illegal!

        Yeah, right. More like if you go to the cops and complain then they will just look at you. Oh, some someone hit you. Right. What's their name? Don't know it? Address? Right. Yeah, sure, we'll get right on that.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @06:41PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @06:41PM (#878931)

          Men create their own aggressors by practicing patriarchal masculinity, which in the US involves ritual infant genital mutilation, hazing, and "selective service." This is what is meant by "toxic masculinity" no matter how badly the MSM tries to butcher the idea to prevent a mass movement, especially one that would act in solidarity with proletarian feminism.

          It is time to throw off the misguided notions of patriarchy that are entirely dependent on the assumption that women only have value if they are sexually subjugated and men only have value if they are engaging in subjugation (the virgin anti-war protester compared to the Chad the imperialist footsoldier--why not the virgin imperialist footsolider who never gets laid except for rape vs. Chad the anti-war protester).

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday August 11 2019, @12:33PM

      by RamiK (1813) on Sunday August 11 2019, @12:33PM (#878828)

      My point was that isolating from the rest of the world while waving the empowerment flag is laughable. This "social" service encourage women to stay in their (literal) comfort zones and never challenge themselves in the real world. When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One's Own she was talking in the pragmatic context of what it took for her personally to write: A zero distractions working space and financial security. How is a social networking service supposed to achieve that when it only networks young girls with each other and keep them taking selfies with their brand new shoes 24/7?

      The subject been studied to exhaustion directly in the context of all-girls boarding school. Gender segregation doesn't empower women to better prepare them "without distractions". It leaves them vulnerable and delusional while even hurting the grade averages.

      Seriously, where's the 2nd and 3rd gen feminists when you need them?

      --
      compiling...