It already feels like time for I Love The 10s. There’s plenty of throwback material. Example: Inception. Alternate example: Gangnam Style. And Taio Cruz would definitely make the cut for Break Your Heart and Dynamite. But he also apparently exists in the here and now. And he made a social network called KeWe (pronounced kiwi).
The first release from Cruz’s development firm Tourean, “KeWe” is a portmanteau of the noticeably rhyming non-phrase “key to the we” and is meant to act as one mega social network by combining functionality based on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Foursquare features. There’s a News Feed-style main screen, multimedia messaging, photo filters, and a map like Foursquare’s Explore tab for checking who’s around.
KeWe’s framing principle seems to be allowing more diverse options in terms of connecting with other people and seeing their location. For example, users can see not just connections, but total strangers on their map if those KeWe users allow their location to be published. And accounts follow each other without an obligation to follow back in a sort of Twitter/Google+ amalgam.
Cruz told Mashable that:
KeWe combines social with messaging but without forcing the user to do either. With Facebook, as soon as you become friends, you are automatically connected. With Twitter, a mutual follow allows for direct messages. With KeWe you can follow or not, and connect or not — the choice is up to the user.
KeWe is free and iOS-only right now, but its features won’t all roll out until August 22 after an invite campaign. Of course it has major redundancies with other social networks, that’s the whole point, but it seems like a clean, user-friendly interface if you’re looking for a clean slate. [AppAdvice, Mashable]