Private Social Media Platforms

• From research, examples of private social media platforms include Cocoon, Familly Wall, Life360, Nextdoor, and 23snaps.

Cocoon

Key Features

• Cocoon's key features include
• Clustered conversations - Cocoon organizes conversations into clusters enabling users to keep up with multiple threads at once.
• Quick composer - after opening the app, users can quickly start sharing photos, links, texts, moods and more. Users can only have one group on Cocoon meaning they will always know who they are sharing with.
• Serendipitous chat - when a user is on Coccon at the same time as another user, a new layer of live interaction opens up.
• Ambient status - the status feature of the app allows users to glance into the world of everyone in their Cocoon.
• Beam thoughts from afar - Cocoon has a lightweight notification system that users can use to let other users know that they are thinking about them.
• A family narrator - the app works in the background to create a narrative of the group's activity over time.
• Automatic flight tracking - a feature that allows Cocoon to "automatically keep track of flights so you can see when a loved one is taking off, en route, and lands at their destination."
• Lightweight feedback - feature that allows users to quickly reply to an update on Cocoon via comments or leaving a unique mark.
• Location on your terms - the app allows users to share their locations to varying levels of specificity i.e. users can share precise location, at the city-level, or turn it off completely if they choose.
• Shared vault - this feature allows users to access all the photos and videos shared by members of their Cocoon in a vault.
• No ads - in time, a paid subscription will be added, but as for now the app does not have any ads.
• Saved places - a feature that allows users to "create and check-in to custom locations that build up a database of places for their Cocoon." When a user arrives at home, work, or any other place that they've saved, their status in Cocoon can be automatically updated.
• Questions to add color - from time to time, the narrator will pose a question like "What was the highlight of your weekend?" or "What are you thankful for today?"

Funding Rounds and Revenues

• In May 2019, Cocoon completed a $3 million seed round that was led by Lerer Hippeau with Y Combinator, Susa Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Advancit Capital, Foundation Capital, iNovia, Shrug Capital and SV Angel also participating. 
• According to Crunchbase, Cocoon has only had the one funding round highlighted above.
• Cocoon's revenue was not available in the public domain.

Number of Users

• Cocoon is only available on iOS and the App Store does not publish the download numbers of apps.
• Alternative app analytics resources such as Appannie and Similar Web were used to search for the number of downloads of the app, but this information still remained unavailable in the public domain.