GL Brain launches social network aiming to challenge Facebook

• Austrian industrialist Wolfgang Pinegger has launched GL Brain, a social network that aims to challenge Facebook by pairing the strengths of Facebook, Xing and Twitter with a social agenda-setting approach.
• The platform offers anonymous networking, which it says is secure, as well as petition tools and real-time statistics on global issues.
• After three years of development and what Pinegger says is an eight-figure personal investment, the network has finished testing with around 15,000 daily users.

Austrian industrialist Wolfgang Pinegger has launched GL Brain (short for Global Brain), a social network built to take on established platforms such as Facebook.

It aims to combine the best of Facebook, Xing and Twitter and add a social agenda-setting element.

Its main selling point is that users can network anonymously and, according to the company, securely.

Pinegger is a former Deutsche Bank advisory board member and a former executive at Pfleiderer AG.

He wants the platform to bring talented people together to work on pressing global problems, and has partnered on the project with Walter Schwimmer, an Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) politician and former Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

Beyond standard social features such as profiles, chat, posting and linking, GL Brain lets users start petitions and connect around popular sustainability topics.

The platform also has real-time statistics on socio-political and global issues.

Development took place in Belgrade. Pinegger hired a team of ten full-time programmers there and housed them together in shared apartments.

Pinegger built GL Brain's own cloud service, with its servers now in Germany.

The worldwide outrage over third-party access to sensitive data after Edward Snowden's surveillance revelations decided his approach, with Pinegger noting that everyday internet users have effectively lost all control over their personal data.

As a result, the platform includes extensive anonymization options.

GL Brain has also moved away from a business model built on advertising-relevant user data.

Advertising will still be one revenue stream, but the company plans to add subscriptions and paid pages where businesses can present themselves.

"It's a business model without personal data," Pinegger said.

According to Pinegger, the project took three years of work and an eight-figure investment, largely funded from his own pocket.

GL Brain has completed its testing phase.

Without any advertising, around 15,000 people use the network daily. Most of them are in the Balkans, because the platform first launched near Belgrade's universities.

The platform is designed for international reach.

It offers 20 language versions and can theoretically be used in at least 230 countries.

Despite the private funding, it will need more money for further development, and a crowdfunding campaign is running on Indiegogo.