Moptwo

Many people still think of social media as being for “the kids.” Believe it or not, social media has already been around for a decade! As its audience matures, the needs and preferences of that audience that is also maturing.  That’s why we’ve chosen none other than the co-founders of Moptwo, Josh Namm (one of Jlife magazine’s very own editors) and Charles Haspel for the business profile this month. I recently had the fortune of speaking with them while they took a short break from taking the technology world by storm!

Even though his family later moved to Los Angeles, Josh has fond memories of living and going to temple in Orange County as a child. “I have very happy memories of living here. I still get that warm fuzzy feeling when I am in Newport Beach or Irvine.”

Josh and Charles met while attending Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences. Far from the drama of “The Social Network,” these two have been friends since they were kids and have an easy-going partnership that many would admire.

What is “Moptwo”? According to Josh, as a politically minded person, he realized that emailing articles back and forth between friends all day long may not be the best way to share news. Around the same time, Charles was getting frustrated that there was no good way to post stories on social media about the apps he had in the App Store without them getting lost in a “feed.”

Josh told Jlife “One day it dawned on me that Facebook was really good at three things: updating your status, uploading photos and posting articles. Twitter isolated the status update portion of that into an entire site. Later on, others started doing something similar with photos and graphics. Nobody had done it for articles and we knew we had something. Fortunately, my best friend is a programmer.”

Moptwo is a more intellectual form of social media because instead of posting small snippets of personal activity or uploading photos, it is about one thing: articles.

Each user gets a page, then they create categories on the page to post relevant articles they find on the web: kind of like a personal online newspaper. When asked about this, Josh said “Absolutely. We are the first site that really democratizes news. Your page is about articles on any subject that matters to you and your followers.

Charles added that “sites like Pinterest are aspirational whereas Moptwo is informational.”

If you aren’t a member already, go to www.moptwo.com to join! It is free (like all social sites) and takes about a minute. They sincerely want your experience on the site to be fun, entertaining and informative. So if you have any questions, email them at support@moptwo.com. They promise to get back to you quickly! In fact, they will literally come to your house and walk you through it—that’s how much they care.

The name “Moptwo”? That was the name of Josh’s childhood dog when he lived in Newport Beach (“the best dog in the world” he still insists decades later).

I would like to note that they are looking for financial support; Josh adds “we are very proud of what we have done with just two people. We’ve created a great framework with an outstanding concept and now we need funding to excel.”

I’m talking to you smart investors out there, strike while the iron is hot!

You can find Moptwo at www.moptwo.com. To visit Jlife on Moptwo, go to www.moptwo.com/OCJlife (join and subscribe to our page to read all of the great articles relevant to the OC Jewish community)!

Tanya Schwied graduated from New York University, studied abroad in Israel, and currently works for the CEO and President of Jewish Federation & Family Services.