State - a new communications platform connecting people through their opinions, rather than personal, professional or social networks - aims to gain traction in SA by tapping into conversations surrounding the upcoming general elections.
The online platform allows users to "state" their opinions by choosing from a range of topics and describing their sentiments in either a few words or phrases.
State launched globally in February and currently has more than 45 million topics to choose from, while a mobile app featuring localised topics about the elections was unveiled in the local Apple store last week.
Alex Asseily, co-founder of State, says SA's elections have allowed the platform to curate topics such as local political leaders and their parties. "You can search for a term, insert your opinion, and State crafts a map which shows what other people think about that particular topic. Those opinions and thoughts are networked and discoverable," he says.
"SA is important to us and we think the elections are exciting, because social media penetration is high. Just like in Turkey and Brazil, it's a country that is deeply aware of where its democracy works and where it doesn't."
This awareness, says Asseily, could positively influence the amount of opinions expressed during the election period.
Asseily - who is also co-founder of consumer and wearable technology company Jawbone - notes that news relevance influenced the decision to localise topics in SA, while a similar drive is taking place in Brazil, Australia, Turkey and India. "When we take on countries, we just want to make sure there are issues or topics that are meaningful to the local market. In the case of SA, it's the elections."
'Aggregated opinion'
Chris Salmanpour, VP of business development at State, says although user figures cannot be disclosed, the platform has "hundreds of thousands of opinions" from over 98 countries.
According to Asseily, the "aggregated opinion" freely available on State's application programming interface offers insights to businesses and brand managers regarding real-time impact among users.
"We won't be exclusive with intel. A certain baseline of insights will be available to everyone and organisations can come to us and request further information," he says.
State has an editorial team whose job is to select and add relevant topics, which new and existing users would find appropriate, says Asseily. "As time goes on, users will figure out what matters to them. For the time being, we need to be more manual."
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