Get Current With raftr
Former Yahoo! President Sue Decker launches new conversation platform
focused on unfolding stories
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Two veteran tech-industry insiders today announced raftr, a
social media platform that will allow people to talk about the world’s
unfolding stories that most fascinate them. Founded by former Yahoo!
President Sue Decker, and former Convera CTO, Claude Vogel, raftr’s mission
is to create the same engaging conversation experiences that happen
naturally at work around the watercooler or at home in our living
rooms—but on a world stage, online.
“I love my social feeds, but they have become super noisy with articles
by publishers looking for distribution, by friends of friends forwarding
random things, or worst of all, by content that is not from trustworthy
sources,” said Decker, raftr’s CEO and co-founder. “What people
are craving is a safe place to engage in conversations about things they
care about, with curated content intended to advance better
conversations about the stories we all follow together, whether that’s
the leader of the free world, a favorite TV show, or a football team’s
path to the Super Bowl.”
Today’s social networks are optimized for fast and atomized content
distribution, which means they are not oriented to create the best
experiences for content consumption and conversation; they are
architected around following “people” rather than “stories.” This leads
to feeds that grow increasingly cluttered with topics of limited
interest and stories of questionable provenance—or conversations that
quickly become echo chambers dominated by celebrities.
Raftr, by contrast, is both curated and story-centric, so
like-minded people can easily engage in discussions with others around
news relevant to the ongoing stories they choose to follow. Raftr’s
editorial team produces ongoing serials across news, TV shows and sports
teams into easy-to-follow narrative “blogcasts” that are shared in
weekly episodes. These blogcasts dive deeper into stories as they
progress, offering links to the best articles of the week, exposing
different perspectives, and posing key questions of intrigue to prompt
engaging conversations.
“Raftr is addressing an important audience of people who have
become fatigued by the overabundance of content from their networks,”
said Jerry Yang, Founding Partner of AME Cloud Ventures and co-founder
of Yahoo!. “Social media connections are important to progressing
intellectual debate, but these conversations cannot take place if they
are buried by extraneous noise. We believe raftr is the future of
engaging around personally relevant and informative content.”
Raftr’s serial stories focus on current news, TV shows and sports
teams, with additional areas rolled out over time based on consumer
interest and demand. Raftr is available on iOS and on the web at www.raftr.com.
To download the app today, visit raftr
in the App Store.
About raftr
Raftr is a place to talk about the world’s unfolding stories that most
captivate you. Available on iOS and the web, raftr encourages you
to share ideas and emotions about the serial stories that we all follow
together, regardless of location or demographics. Founded in 2015 by Sue
Decker and Claude Vogel, raftr is headquartered in San Francisco.
To learn more and download the raftr app, visit: www.raftr.com.
Contacts
Inner Circle Labs for raftr
Meredith Klee, 415-684-9407
raftr@innercirclelabs.com
