myApollo a private social network

A Burlington-based company says it has developed the first fully private social network.

Instead of storing user data on servers, myApollo distributes information through a peer-to-peer network that allows the user to maintain control of the content.

27 year old Harvey Medcalf hatched the idea in Hamilton, in his mom’s basement.

“We love social media. We love social media we use. We just don’t love the way social media we use, uses us. and we wanted to change that.”

myApollo works like any other social network. You can share pictures and messages with other users you’re “friends” with, but differs when it comes to privacy.

“Instead of you taking your information and storing it in a third party in a storage pool, we allow people to leverage the power of the devices they have in their pocket.”

In that way, Medcalf says myApollo is the world’s first peer to peer social network.

In its data use policy, Facebook says it stores users’ data for as long as necessary to provide products and services to the user and others. With myApollo, the user maintains full control of their own content, because the company never has it.

“If they choose to take that picture down it also takes down all the times that picture may have been shared.”

Communications expert Alex Sevigny says privacy has recently become a growing concern for people on social media. “For a while the public wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t thinking about this. Now it’s on everybody’s mind.”

“It’s all about finding an niche and offering a service that the big players aren’t offering right now and that’s what it looks like Arroware is doing with myApollo.”

Medcalf: “The social network will never have advertising and it will always be free to use.”

So how will my Apollo make money?

“We have a lot of enterprise solutions that we’re looking to bring to market – and with those solutions we’ll look to licence or to monetize.”

Metcalf says his company isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel — just the model.

myApollo has been live for about a month. The app is available on Android and iOS and there will soon be a web portal for people who want to log in online.

While he wouldn’t give a specific number, Medcalf says there are already thousands of users.