Germ Theory: Why We Chose a Provocative Name for a Safer Messenger
A cluster of slender grey mushrooms grows from a mossy log. By Charlie Marshall, used under CC Attribution 2.0 license via Wikimedia Commons
Our company name Germ Network emerged from a brainstorm off of the word “grassroots.” Embracing complex systems and autonomous coordination, it names a network that will grow from the ground up, rather than be delegated from the top down. As germination, it evokes the roots, mushrooms, and rhizhomes that connect our world.
Germ DM, our end-to-end encrypted messenger, is the germ of an idea: that the future of communication puts us back in control. Control over how we identify, who we connect with, and what information we share.
The germ is our chosen symbol of natural growth. We embrace this difficult metaphor to disrupt our acceptance of the status quo. It reminds us that we are interconnected, we are fragile, and we have choices to make.
We are interconnected, we are fragile, and we have choices to make.
Germ DM is small, yet built for growth. It is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that you own, on your device—so we can’t read anything you write in it, starting with your profile information. When you download it, set-up might be so easy you didn’t notice we never asked for your phone number or an e-mail address.
You have agency over our software. You control your copy of our app and the data it holds, and on Germ you call the shots in your social world. Instead of a centralized universe where the platform drives what you see and who you meet, this network is a complex system driven by its users. Our technology amplifies your human choices to gather, share, or separate. On Germ, you decide.
You decide how to identify. You choose your own name, pronouns, and photo. You can create multiple identities that you share with different people, helping you manage what you share with whom.
You decide who can discover you. Without phone numbers or handles, you form connections that you control. If you don’t want to hear from someone, disconnect—you control whether they can re-connect with you.
You decide how to spend your time. You control who can notify you in simple and manageable ways. And by chatting in a space without addictive content feeds, you join and leave the app when you want to talk to your friends.
Today, Germ DM lets you talk to one person at a time. The control we’ve given you over these micro-interactions makes Germ safer by design. As we open up more ways for you to be discovered and connect, our safety tooling will grow as well—with more control over what messages reach you, how you manage your boundaries, and how you report abuse.
You have agency over our software.
The advertising model ruined how we communicate. Under the banners of “growth hacking” and “virality,” ad-powered platforms built a world that is frictionless, yet sticky—so we bump into everyone, yet can never let them go.
Businesses serve their customers through the products they sell. By cutting us out of this deal, ad-supported platforms left us underserved. The ad model created incentives that are hostile to boundaries, because limiting what we share with each other threatens the lifeblood of the ad-targeting operation. This misalignment is why it’s become so hard to safely start a conversation with someone I just met, broadcast updates and photos with select groups of friends, or share my physical presence in a controlled way.
But without a revenue model, software systems struggle to thrive. Using Germ will always be free, but as our product grows, we will build features that you can purchase. By selling to you, we prioritize you—it means our job is to make you happy. By doing business with our users directly, together we can build a network that is sustainable, healthy, and strong. As a proud Public Benefit Corporation, we’re engineered to sustainably solve your problems, not advertisers’.
Germ is engineered for sustainability.
Germ, noun, from the Latin germen: “spring, offshoot; sprout, bud.” A germ is what’s new, what’s novel, what’s beginning. A tiny expression of the past and the future, the nutrient-rich seed embryo of a cereal, “the part that develops into a plant.”
Growth doesn’t need to be hacked. The whole world is connected by our small-scale interactions—by people talking to each other directly, on purpose, through choice. Germ is at the beginning of a big journey to serve the range of your communication needs, from talking to a new friend once to building community with them for a lifetime.
We’re the network that grows at the speed of trust. Nice to meet you, we’re Germ.
