Ukrainian internet entrepreneur Alexei Mas has left his position as head of the innovation laboratory at Kyivstar to launch a new venture called «Craft Social Networks». The project, announced after his departure on July 31, 2019, aims to provide a platform for building custom social networks tailored to the needs of specific companies, communities, or user groups.
Mas describes the initiative as a return to a distributed internet model within the social media space. He argues that existing major platforms have become overly centralized, leaving businesses and communities without sufficient control over their own communication tools. «Craft Social Networks» is designed to fill a gap between Facebook and Telegram: while Facebook allows groups, users are subject to the platform's rules and algorithms, and Telegram offers channels and chats but lacks robust community structuring, gamification, and user engagement management features.
The project envisions creating social networks on an individual basis, each adapted to a specific audience, theme, and use case. According to Mas, the product should be useful for companies that need not only to broadcast information but also to organize sustainable interaction within their communities. The platform would allow organizations to build their own online communities without full dependence on large centralized platforms.
In the initial phase, the project team plans to gather technical requirements, assemble a team, attract investors, and develop several prototypes. From these, a primary product version will be selected. The team also considers launching a mobile web version and developing applications for Android and iOS. Mas expects to attract early customers willing to test the custom social network model in practice, and the project already has several potential clients lined up.
The financial model involves attracting a title investor and a syndicate of small investors. Syndicate members can enter the project with relatively small sums and receive a stake proportional to their investment. Mas believes this approach will help gather not only capital but also a community of people interested in developing a new model for social networks.
Alexei Mas is a well-known Ukrainian internet entrepreneur with a track record of developing online projects such as,, and «Tree of Friends», and he was a co-founder of the iForum conference. For the past three years, he worked at Kyivstar on innovative directions. He views «Craft Social Networks» as an independent business with global potential, aiming to create a tool that allows companies and communities to launch their own social networks without being fully dependent on large centralized platforms.
