Why “Stupid by Design” isn’t that stupid after all

Most messengers today don’t annoy you with advertisement (yet), promise not to analyze user behavior (yet), but almost all reserve the right to change their privacy policy at their discretion and at any given point. If you read the legal disclosures of our fellow messenger vendors carefully you frequently find statements like “we may” do this or that in the future. Pretty smart to keep the door open – that’s not who we are though.

Quo vadis? Intelligent or smartly Stupid.

If stupid is the opposite of intelligent then we are truly stupid when it comes to analyzing user behavior and potentially migrating to a user-behavior-analyzed advertisement based business model. We just don’t do it – ever!

“Stupid by design” means we don’t apply Business Intelligence or Big Data algorithms on user behavior, or location, phone numbers, or any other user generated content that goes through our system. We don’t analyze anything and will not analyze anything ever – Period. We run a simple report on how many users are in our system and how many messages are exchanged within a particular time period, it’s that simple and “Stupid by Design”.

If we ever go out of business we will delete every single line of code and every single bit of information we ever collected before we turn off the lights. If we ever get bought out we will insist that the four Chiemo principles will live on or we will not enter into the deal. It might sound like a “stupid” promise, but that’s who we are.

Chiemo is “stupid by design” when you compare us with other, what we call, first generation messengers. You can do the same and in some areas even more in terms of feature richness of the app, in a nutshell though, we have a completely different focus.

Other messengers might have a head-start of 3 to 5 years in terms of registered users, possibly some even cooler looking screens, however, the Chiemo Social Messenger is designed based on a more advanced concept and business model from ground up. We are neither crazy about driving user numbers up as quickly as possible, nor to get acquired for an insane amount tomorrow, rather to focus on our vision where the messenger app will become much more than just a simple tool to exchange text messages, photos, video clips or voice. Our vision is to provide an “Instant Information Hub”, where users can see all information that matter to their lives at a glance in the as fast as possible and as convenient and intuitive as possible.

That’s why we developed the Dashboard “Chiemo Instant Information Hub” in our app as the hub and spoke center of the Chiemo Social Messenger, as well as the supFriend concept with an isolated super secure API. The API basically functions like a gateway for information exchange, an SMS text messaging alternative for commercial opt-in subscription services – way more secure, more engaging and less expensive though.

How does Chiemo make money in a “Stupid by Design” world?

Well, for-profit service providers will pay a fee to offer opt-in subscription services, like checking your account balance, or retrieving any other information in a private and secure way, that’s the center of our business model. We don’t need to attempt to charge users 99 cents per year, that’s “stupid based on bad design” in our book, we let opt-in subscription providers pay the bill – that’s honest, straightforward, simple and a win-win-win situation for everyone.

Chiemo will always be free for users, including a no-spying and no-annoyance guarantee, no need to check for changes in the fine-print every week, it’s an irrevocable “stupid by design” Chiemo commitment.