Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is on a mission to save the world. This time his tool of choice isn’t based on democratising knowledge but on connecting people looking to good.
Wales has launched a new mobile network, called The People’s Operator (TPO), which describes itself as a “community of people that are raising money for causes just by being part of it”.
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To describe TPO as a mobile network only would be inaccurate, as there’s also a heavy social component. And in what will come as a welcome relief to anyone who feels like social networks have sold their souls, TPO is ad-free. It manages to be so because it’s supported by the mobile network.
The mobile network itself is attempting to grow on a combination of word-of-mouth and the fact that, rather than spending 10% of your bill on advertising, it’ll donate that 10% to a cause of your choice. It’ll also donate 25% of its revenues to charity.
Read more: Wikipedia boss Jimmy Wales to create Facebook competitor?
In a letter published on the TPO site, Wales explains the rationale behind the mobile-cum-social network:
- Existing social networks treat you as a commodity to be sold to advertisers. This leads naturally to intrusive use of your data and an inherent conflict between what you want and what advertisers need.
- Mobile phone companies spend huge amounts of money on advertising to sell you what is essentially a commodity service.
- Yet, we live in an era where word of mouth is more powerful than ever before. All that money spent on advertising is a waste.
Wales describes the social network component as being somewhat like Twitter, “but better”.
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Currently operating in both the US and UK, TPO is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), meaning that it doesn’t have to spend anything on building its own infrastructure.
According to Mashable, their are a number of prepaid and monthly deals available, ranging from US$9 in price to US$89.
This is not the first time Wales has been associated with a social network. Back in 2007, Memeburn publisher Matthew Buckland revealed that Wales had showed off a search product that looked much more like a Facebook competitor than a search product.
So far, there are around 73 causes that you can support using TPO
