SUJO The Social News App is Launching May 21st
The SUJO app releases to Apple App and Google Play stores helping users navigate the post-truth influencer-driven media environment.
Chicago, IL - May 17, 2018 – SUJO releases to the app stores on Monday, May 21st bringing the first true social news app experience to market. SUJO is a curated social news app that helps users organize and navigate the new media reality. The app delivers a customizable mix of user feedback, journalism, and opinion while giving users a comfortable place to interact around headlines.
SUJO is a news app for the post-truth influencer-driven era. Consumers are in a crisis of trust with media and how news is delivered through social platforms. The line between opinion and journalism is blurred, and people are affected by influencers more than ever before. A large majority of news consumers say the amount of information available actually makes it harder to stay informed (Knight, 2018). The number of people who rely on social media for news continues to increase yet so does their apprehension of interacting around headlines (Pew, 2016).
“I’ve always had a big appetite for online news and talking about issues that affect us all on social media. But it was too time-consuming to get reliable journalism, diverse influencer opinion, perspectives from regular folks, and talk about headlines,” says CEO Daniel Rendon. “I couldn’t find a solution that puts all of these parts of media diet together in a way that was fun and saved time. This is why we created SUJO.”
Most platforms will serve content based on a user’s past behavior. When behavioral recommendations made on other platforms are combined with content shared by the user’s own social network, a “filter bubble” is created that increases the division among audiences. To pierce these filter bubbles, SUJO journalists will curate and summarize influencer-produced, opinionated content and post them in pairs along opposing sides of an issue. This gives users a quick way to consume viewpoints they might not normally come across.
To balance opinion and user feedback with information, SUJO journalists also curate objective journalism from multiple sources and apply a fact-verification process before posting. Influencer, journalist, and user-contributed content are all clearly labeled on the app.
“SUJO gives users everything to understand the reality around a headline all in one place,” says Rendon. “The app focuses on giving people headlines with a comfortable social interaction layer, not headlines inserted into their social-first interactions.”
SUJO accomplishes this through a unit called a “SNiP” or “Social News Post.” SNiPs focus interaction around content, not between users. This comfortable social interaction is afforded through anonymity, thought-provoking polling questions instead of emoting, and single-entry “statements” instead of a comment section. There are also no user groups and no direct messaging between users.
Through this innovative way of delivering facts, opinion, and user-feedback, SUJO hopes to create a more informed, conversational, and empathetic community.
- Daniel Rendon, Founder and CEO.
About the SUJO App and Odeon Media:
The SUJO platform was created to combine the most important ways people inform themselves and form their opinions by providing a mix of fact-verified information, influencer opinion and user-contributions. The name “SUJO” comes from “Summaries of User feedback, Journalism and Opinion” which is drawn from the spirit of making these prominent factors easily-consumable. SUJO utilizes a team of journalists and subject matter experts to source and curate content on the SUJO platform.
SUJO founder, Daniel Rendon is a former Director at CBS Local Digital Media and was recently featured in Weber Shandwick’s “Establishing Truth in a Post-Truth World” panel event and the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce technology incubator. SUJO, formally known as Odeon, is the product of Odeon Media Inc. headquartered in Chicago’s 1871 technology entrepreneurship center.
Find out more about SUJO at www.sujohome.com.
Keep up with SUJO at:
www.facebook.com/sujohome
www.twitter.com/sujohome
www.instagram.com/sujohome/
www.linkedin.com/company/odeonhub/
References:
Knight Foundation. (2018, January 15). AMERICAN VIEWS: TRUST, MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY. Retrieved from https://knightfoundation.org/reports/american-views-trust-media-and-democracy
Pew Research Center. (2016, October 25). The Political Environment on Social Media. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/the-political-environment-on-social-media/
