A new Canadian social media platform, Northsocial, launched from Chilliwack a year ago, is geared to reflecting Canadian values and protecting digital sovereignty.
“Canada has incredible communities and creators, but most of our online spaces are owned and operated elsewhere,” explained Kalvin Morrow, co-founder and chief operating officer for Northsocial.
“We wanted to build something that reflects Canadian values and keeps our digital communities closer to home.”
Digital sovereignty is the cornerstone of Northsocial.
“It’s our strongpoint,” Morrow said. “We built all of this from scratch to enable it. When you go online and post privately on Northsocial, all of your data stays in Canada.”
Northsocial.ca went live in beta format a year ago, led by the Chilliwack team of Kalvin Morrow, Colin Schmidt, Brenda Currie and Jill Santos from Zynim Media Inc.
The platform has more than 6,000 users so far, and they’re working toward the next milestone at the 10,000-mark, for those opting for a truly Canadian approach.
“We believe Canadians should have access to a digital space that prioritizes meaningful conversation and community engagement rather than algorithm-driven outrage,” Morrow said. “It’s a huge part of what we’re doing.”
Thousands of Canadians are creating profiles on Northsocial.ca, connecting with new users, and diving into community discussions.
The unique concept of supporting Canadians, and fostering Canadian business through a new network like Northsocial was Brenda Currie’s idea, Morrow said.
Currie came up with the inspired idea to create a network for Canadians by Canadians one night in bed as she came down with the flu. She called up Morrow and Schmidt and brainstormed it the next day with the Zynim team.
Schmidt went out and bought the Northsocial domain name the very next morning after hearing the compelling Canuck-inspired idea.
Fast forward a year and it is being touted as an antidote to doom-scrolling for Canadians.
The team chose to make Northsocial fiercely positive in nature, and apolitical by design, using their own servers and back-end infrastructure.
“We are not left or right,” Morrow said. “We are an engaged, positive space that is bringing Canadians together from Coast to Coast to Coast. We’re not anti-anything. We’re pro-Canadian.”
The concept features an absence of manipulation from foreign ownership of the platform, the co-founder said.
“Imagine an experience where users actually decide the content they wanted to see rather than having it shoved down their throats,” Morrow offered.
“I think that’s what people will like about Northsocial.”
The team of four responsible for Northsocial, each are bringing their respective strengths to the project from the worlds of technology, gaming, sales and marketing, and computer engineering.
One thing that sets Northsocial apart was the decision to make the platform adult-only.
“We don’t see it as appropriate to go after younger audiences,” Morrow added.
They also didn’t create an algorithm in order to force-feed ads to their users, and instead feature a good-deals section for Canadian products from Canadian companies, a news section, and one for community groups.
The mission is to foster community-driven engagement and home-grown support for Canadian creators and businesses as they scale up the technology, and evolve the platform over time.
The long-term vision for Northsocial features creator monetization tools and tricks designed to help local organizations build stronger interest-based communities with a distinctly Canadian flavour.
These days they are busily completing their due diligence on the Northsocial mobile app they have built and aim to roll out relatively soon. They’ve been shopping it around to app stores, and touting its unique features.
So where do they see themselves in a year from now?
“We’re hoping we’ll have a greatly expanded, Canadian-focused community,” Morrow concluded.