The beta version of the social network Spill is now available for download from the App Store by invitation. Last year, Alfonzo Turrell, the former global head of social and editorial affairs at Twitter, founded his own company after leaving Twitter and raised $2.75 million in funding.
Spill is an innovative visual microblogging multimedia program with a Tumblr-like interface and timeline. The top menu displays popular posts and hashtags, while the bottom of the screen has a box for posting text, gifs, videos, photos, links, and polls.
When launching the alpha version of Spill, the company specifically looked for black and queer authors, considering them important creators of trends and memes on the Internet. The social network was launched in partnership with the horror film The Blackening, which features an all-black cast.
Kenya Parham, who recently joined Spill as global vice president of community and partnerships, is working with Terrell, former director of digital marketing at HBO, to develop a strategy for leveraging media sponsorship to increase revenue.
Twitter and its alternative platforms such as Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky are having content moderation issues, notes NIX Solutions. Recently, serious conflicts arose with black users when the social network failed to remove threatening comments directed against a black influencer. Spill believes that the rating system can be used to improve moderation: users will receive regular points, and with a high rating they will have access to new features and benefits.
“We aim to incentivize positive and non-toxic behavior by rewarding users for their consistency, engagement and contributions to the platform, regardless of the number of subscribers,” said Terrell.
He also added that similar scoring systems already exist on most social networks, they just don’t show up for users.
Spill is also developing its own powerful language model for content moderation to avoid the problems of labeling black people’s tweets as offensive. The platform plans to introduce blockchain-based features to reward users who create viral trends.