“That isn’t something I normally would do, but when you’re recording a Polo, it’s just you in that moment. “You know how it goes on Marco Polo – as you’re thinking of things to say, you’re checking yourself out a little,” she says. Tracking the spot’s progression as she connected with friends and family members alerted Crystal to the fact that it might be more than just a freckle or a scrape. Spotting something – and getting family in on the discussionĬrystal and her family started using Marco Polo to stay in touch when Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order took effect in March 2020. “The app was integral to me catching it,” Crystal says.
Marcopolo chat skin#
When she followed her hunch and had it checked out, she learned that the spot was a basal cell carcinoma – skin cancer. Over time, she noticed in subsequent Polos that the mark grew and changed. It was her daily chats with friends, and seeing her face in Polos, that drew Crystal’s attention to an odd mark on her forehead.
“I don’t spend a lot of time in front of the mirror putting on makeup or just looking at myself.” “Sometimes I just roll out of bed and start my day,” the human resources manager says. “Now with everybody social distancing, I’m concerned about the increase in mental health issues that we’re going to start seeing.Crystal Calla considers herself low-maintenance – even more so since she started working from home during the pandemic. “Social distancing is so important and the mental health piece of it cannot be forgotten,” Bortnik says. Long before this recent streak of popularity, Bortnik says her mission has been to cure the existing epidemic of loneliness, which is being exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Marcopolo chat series#
Since its $20 million Series B round of funding led by Benchmark in 2016, its largest to date, Joya Communications has raised $27 million in private equity. As the team works on money making ideas, it’s in a good place financially. A premium version of Marco Polo which allows users to store messages is available for $9.99 a month, but the company has yet to generate revenue. From this family project grew their company, Joya Communications, a 38-person team located across 15 U.S. This hope is the reason Bortnik and her husband began working on the app in 2012 as a way for their kids to keep up with relatives in their home countries of Ukraine and Poland. Bortnik says she hopes communication on Marco Polo takes on a more casual and “real” tone. The app is less of a “highlights reel of one’s life” or a place to showcase feigned happiness, and more like the “Finstas,” the ironically named “fake Instagram” accounts in which social media users show their “real” selves. “You’re talking to your mom, you’re talking to your sisters, so there’s not that need to put on a show. You won’t find over-the-top effects that turn you into a dog, she points out as an example.
The platform is intended for a more intimate audience allowing for a more authentic way of communicating, Bortnik says. “It’s really for your closest friends,” she says.
Marcopolo chat full#
“You can just talk, you don’t have to worry about ‘how many likes is Polo going to get?” Bortnik also notes that Marco Polo is ad-free and private, with no feeds full of strangers to scroll through. Unlike Snapchat, “there are no social comparisons, no counts of likes,” she says. Notably, Snapchat, with 218 million daily active users, also posted increased user engagement in March, with a 50% increase in voice through the app.The central functions between Marco Polo and Snapchat are the same, but Bortnik points to what she believes are specific advantages of her four-year-old platform. The study goes on to note that “Marco Polo users were significantly less lonely, exhibited fewer depressive symptoms, and had higher life satisfaction than Snapchat users.” After two weeks “ 74% of users said their mood was better. “Once people start using Marco Polo they feel happier,” Vlada Bortnik says, citing a January 2020 study Joya Communications conducted with Brigham Young University-Idaho.
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