ExtentWorld, a social media platform co-founded by Hang Dinh, believes that a user’s private data should remain private. “It seems so obvious,” Hang says, “but these days, we all know that our information is exploited by the big social media sites, who use it to place targeted ads on our pages. I don’t think I am alone when I say that I don’t like being spied on. It was one reason we created ExtentWorld: to give our users the assurance that their private information will remain their own.”
That approach is working well for the company. ExtentWorld’s users come from 25 countries. “As word gets out and more people find us, that number is growing,” Hang says. “They are enjoying using a site that solves the problems we’ve all been grappling with on the bigger platforms.”
ExtentWork is the brainchild of four software engineers. “We’re all a bunch of techies,” Hang says, laughing. “We’ve all got a PhD in computer science and engineering, and I am a tenured associate professor of computer and information sciences at Indiana University South Bend. We used our collective knowledge to create a really incredible platform.”
Hang’s brother, one of those techies, originally thought of ExtentWorld. “I was really bothered, like so many people, when I saw how Facebook tracks what you look at,” he says. “It seemed like a major violation of my privacy, so I immediately stopped using them. I still liked social media, however, so I thought of ExtentWorld so that online communication could be done better.”
Hang listened to his idea and was impressed by his vision, but she was unsure at first. “You’ve got to remember that even a standard platform would need thirty full-time software engineers to create it,” she says. “His platform wasn’t standard. The number of people he would need was a lot higher because of his bells and whistles.”
Hang couldn’t shake the idea, however. “It stayed with me because I was teaching a course that discussed privacy policies of social media. Therefore, I was even more aware than the average social media user how far privacy concerns reach. I knew that Facebook tracks your internet browsing history. This completely changed my perspective, as like most people, I simply do not like to be spied on, and I knew my brother was on to something big.”
Hang’s brother, in the meantime, invented two code-generating tools. This enabled ExtentWorld to be developed by just three developers, and as the engineers worked on the new platform, Hang saw how it was different from sites like Facebook. She especially liked its end-to-end encrypted video calling. She could now connect with her family in Vietnam and Germany without concerns about privacy. “I was sold. Once we launched ExtentWorld in 2020, I finally took the big step and deleted my Facebook account.”
To help her brother’s product realize its full potential, she formed ExtentWorld LLC. “That was definitely a step outside of my comfort zone,” Hang remembers. “I read up on forming and running businesses so that I could step in and run the company while my brother focuses on programming and coding.”
ExtentWorld has many capabilities that differentiate it from other social media platforms. One is that a user has one account with up to eight different profiles: public, private, work, academic, dating, merchant, anonymous, and secret. ExtentWorld also provides a dating service with rules that are designed to maximize the user’s privacy.
Information on ExtentWorld is organized based on locations. Each location, such as a city or a country, has a forum where the users interested in that place can view and post. However, for a location at the national level, ExtentWorld restricts free posts to people with a high reputation score.
These features have led to more investors, who may purchase eShare, which is a pre-IPO ExtentWorld common share. ExtentWorld uses eCoin for all transactions within ExtentWorld; eCoin is virtual currency but not cryptocurrency.
Hang sees a big future for ExtentWorld. “I think the social media landscape will continue to be dominated by big players for a while, but we are gaining traction as more people who are tired of their privacy being violated find out about us. Users are becoming more aware of the issues with mainstream social media and are turning to use for the solution. We already have registered users from 25 countries.”
The most challenging task for ExtentWorld’s creators has been marketing. “We are academic and technical people – we can build a good product, but we are not natural marketers. We have had to learn everything about marketing from zero,” Hang states. “In Vietnamese, we have a saying: ‘Vạn sự khởi đầu nan,’ which means ‘All things are difficult before they are easy.’ Thankfully, because of what we have learned, marketing has been becoming easier.”
As the team’s ability to market increases, so does the number of ExtentWorld’s users. “Every day, we grow,” Hang says. “It’s tremendously exciting, especially since we’re a global platform. Give us five years, and we’ll have millions of users.”
0
0
