This is a smart move for Cuban who has been fined a number of times in the past by the NBA for making disparaging comments about league officials, most notably referees.
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The mercurial and controversial businessman Mark Cuban is getting into the mobile app business. He has invested in ephemeral mobile apps which can delete a person’s texts and e mails permanently.
Cuban invested in a new company called Xpire which launched just last month and which he co-founded with Jesse Stauffer, a University of North Texas computer science senior. The new company produces a technology which lets users set an expiration date for their Facebook and Twitter posts so that they will disappear from the Net.
This is similar to the service offered by Snapchat which lets its users set a time limit on the pictures that they post through it.
Stauffer said, “We’re taking the whole Snapchat effect of expiring messages and applying it to a more public space like social networking.”
According to Cuban, there’s no point in holding on to most of the content millions of us are generating every day online. In fact, holding on to these messages, which are intended for nothing more than a moment’s dubious pleasure of sending and receiving, could end up badly. The next person who will find our silly texting over whatever medium down the electronic road, will most likely read them out of context and with a jaundiced eye. So why not get rid of it?
The investment in Xpire comes after the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks went through an investigation for insider stock trading last year. While Cuban was cleared of any wrongdoing, Federal authorities in America were able to comb through all of his personal communications as part of their investigation.
Cuban told The Dallas Morning News, “I watched how they manipulated everything that I wrote in messages, and I realized that any digital communications I used was at risk.”
This is a smart move for Cuban who has been fined a number of times in the past by the BNA for making disparaging comments about league officials, most notably referees. It will be hard for the league to fine him if there is no recorded evidence of any future comments Cuban wished he could take back.
Mr. Stauffer impressed Cuban with his idea for the app after sending the businessman an unsolicited e mail.
The technology will complement nicely the recent European Union court decision requiring Google to comply with an individual’s request to have negative results removed from any listings posted under searches for his name. And there’s the growing field of reputation managers, looking to save their clients from online nastiness directed at them.
Mr. Cuban is also using app technology to keep the Mavericks’ fans apprised of the team’s dealings in the player free agency market, by utilizing his other investment in apps — Cyber Dust, which lets users post messages that will be permanently deleted after only 30 seconds. The catch here is that the recipients must also have the App.
Cuban stated, “I’m going to be sending out blasts on what we are doing on Cyber Dust, so you can add me at ‘blogmaverick.’ That will be where you are able to get any inside information. I won’t be tweeting it.”
Mark Cuban, 56, is a self made businessman who was born to a working class Jewish family in Pittsburgh. He has a B.S. in business administration from Indiana University in Bloomington’s Kelley School of Business.
When he was 24, Cuban moved to Dallas where he established Broadcast.com in the 90s which was eventually sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock. Cuban used his new fortune to buy the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 and is currently worth an estimated $2.6 billion.
Jesse Stauffer, 20, is a mostly self-taught software developer from Dallas, TX. He has a passion for building mobile apps, specifically in the social networking space. He is also the creator and developer of Camo, an anonymous social networking tool for college students which lets them speak freely about college events.
