The comeback of Appointment Internet: what we can learn from Geneva, the latest social app

If, according to Pew Research, the only demographic category in the US that slightly lost interest in social media is people aged 18-29, the Geneva app may be the answer to its needs.

Geneva was founded in 2019 by John Hauser precisely to help Gen Z create digital communities based on their own passions and interests. It was officially launched in 2020; by 2021, the app raised $22 million of investor money and quadrupled its number of users since the beginning of 2022. (The company hasn’t shared its user numbers publicly).

Indeed, the early adopters of Geneva rave about how the app’s features far surpass other digital chat spaces. Overall, it seems like a mix of Discord, Clubhouse and Zoom, but with a more user-friendly interface.

If you look at it, platforms are gradually shifting away from the “social media” label in order to create more trust among young users who seek both authenticity and innovation in online spaces. The social limitations of the pandemic contributed to making Appointment Internet, the experience of participating in simultaneous online group activities like the one Geneva offers – a trend that contrasts individualistic algorithms leading to isolated internet activities. By offering a space where people can share interests and spark group conversations, in Hauser’s words, Geneva has – starting from its name, recalling the Geneva Conventions – the ambitious intention of making the internet a better place. (Geneva’s representatives were not available for an interview with The Fix).

Italian journalist and media expert Francesco Oggiano told me that this trend is maintaining people loyal to a brand or a person, just like the tech journalist Casey Newton does on Discord: “Geneva is less nerdy than that, and aims more than every other social channel at audio and video interaction”.

The comparison between an app specifically crafted for community building and other known online spaces, such as Slack or Discord, is a recurrent online conversation. 

I talked about this with Sandy Sanchez, strategist, content creator and community manager of the Freelance Friends group on Geneva: “I think [Geneva is] great for organising an online community. It’s different than other social media because it’s designed to be a group chat for communities. It has a lot of great features like having different channels within your group, polls, calendars, and the ability to host video meetings. It’s very similar to Discord, except it’s way less overwhelming to me…”

How Geneva works

Geneva is a social app available for both Android and iOS. Once you download it, you are ready to look for Homes you can fit in – that is, landing pages that gather people with the same interests. Homes are thematically sorted: environment, books, fitness, study; are all examples of possible macro-interests that people can share, besides “local” rooms that indicate belonging to a specific area where people can just meet up.

Just like any home, on Geneva there are Rooms that can be freely joined (unlike Clubhouse) that gather more specific groups. There are multiple possibilities to interact: through live audio, live video, just chatting in a group, or through private DMs.

With so many opportunities for communication, content moderation is a key task for the team developing Geneva. Apart from requiring you to register with a phone number, in order to enter a Room, it is mandatory to answer a questionnaire first. When accepted, the user will find a moderator, which reduces the risk of finding hateful content. These operations – more coming soon – are called Gates.

As the app isn’t still big, it is not certain whether this model will be enough for what concerns safety. Who will control whether Room moderators are doing their job? If anyone can create a Room, how to prevent them from being focused on inappropriate topics and/or spreading misinformation? The company’s current position was summarised by Hauser in an interview for The Washington Post; according to the founder as cited by The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz,  “Geneva hasn’t struggled with issues around moderation yet, and he believes design choices, like the fact that Geneva requires real names, make it less hospitable for bad actors and trolls”.

Focusing less on content, more on community

Geneva has been an interesting place for brands; as The Washington Post’s Lorenz put it,  “community is the new follower count”. Indeed, the statement holds true as more and more brands are deciding to be represented by influencers with a higher engagement rate rather than considering just the number of their fans.

One interesting example of long-time community building efforts is the beauty brand Glossier. Kim Johnson, Geneva’s community manager, remembers on Twitter having opened a community Slack in 2015 to engage with Glossier’s most loyal fans: “It was an uphill battle being on an app that was never meant for us. Communities need great (& free) tools too! Built for us”.

The community-building aspect goes hand-in-hand with what values a company wants to maintain over time. Whether it is inclusion, support, eco-friendly lifestyle or innovation, all of this can be conveyed through more traditional ways – products, design, social media posts – but also by sparking long-lasting conversations, both on- and off-line, on topics that matter to people.

Can Geneva be useful for newsrooms?

Geneva wasn’t built with news media in mind, and there haven’t been major successful use cases by news outlets so far. That said, Oggiano told me Geneva can be helpful both to newsrooms and media experts as it is made to create communities, more than being focused on selling a product. It gathers people passionate about a certain theme to exchange content and exploit a common interest.

Geneva doesn’t currently have a House or even a Room dedicated to news. This may be for a few reasons: the “community space” of Geneva was born more for niche interests than news reporting, and the app is generally still new, which means there are still not many groups available. But if a news outlet created a dedicated Room – doing so is available for news organisations, just like for other brands already present on Geneva such as Rare Beauty – people could be able to share live audio about a certain situation happening, or even chat about the latest feature in a magazine, just like news websites and Substack newsletters allow comments that have the power to foster the inspiration for a new piece. Journalists could also take part in thematic rooms to gather material for reporting. 

Another benefit of building a community on a space designed for it is that it is possible to engage communities that are usually left on the other side of the screen, not being much thought of in society, and sometimes even in journalism itself. When the public enters the editorial process, it has the potential to help journalism move from being one-sided and hierarchical to a transformational process where communities are involved in both giving perspective and amplifying conversations. This process is not free of drawbacks: apart from letting in untrustworthy people, journalists may be pressured to follow poor incentives like short-term fame.

Sanchez as well, when imagining the future of Geneva, mentioned that the app added an option to discover homes: “I think we might see ‘recommended for you’ features in the future, especially as more and more people join Geneva and start their own online communities. And in general, I think Geneva will get more recognition as the go-to platform for group chats. People will feel more inspired to start communities around their interests, so I think we’ll see a lot of fun, niche communities pop up!”.

The upshot

Geneva may not become popular like Instagram or TikTok, but its existence tells us people are needing more digital intimacy through group-bonding. And promoting a two-way conversation separates users from individualistic feeds, shadowbans and hierarchical, passive display of content. 

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