When we started building this we were adamant about making something we wanted to use. There are a number of open and successful options out there, they just didn't work the way we wanted it to. Building a general network that appealed to us and our parents / co-workers meant we had to make sure the experience was just right and is why we went for a ground up approach. Unfortunately that puts users in the position that they have to just trust our words when it comes to privacy. Trust is earned and we just got started. I can make promises about not selling out but until we prove it they will just be words. We are users ourselves, we don't want to feel like we're being watched and have every grain of data out there for advertisers to see. In time we hope to prove we want that for everyone else too.

This is not to say we haven't been actively looking at ways we can open up or become compliant with a few of the open protocols that already exist as long as it fits with the personal privacy we want for our users on top of the data privacy.