Q&A: Mapture’s Zeyad Salloum
At one point or another, we’ve all been tricked by fake photos or videos circulating online. Remember when it supposedly snowed at the pyramids last winter? While we in Cairo may have known better, those photos of white-capped pyramids went viral, fooling countless unsuspecting viewers across the globe.
So some people got the wrong information about the weather in Giza at that time. But what if it wasn’t weather? What if it was traffic? Or clashes? Or a “coup”?
As one of the co-founders of Mapture wrote:
“A lot of the content we are shown cannot be verified. We don’t really know where it comes from, and whether or not its source and authenticity are true. To the average reader that might be OK, but I am not an average reader. I want the truth.”
Enter Mapture, a newly launched mobile app that verifies and maps anonymous visual content with its exact time, date and location. We chatted with co-founder Zeyad Salloum to get the scoop behind Mapture.
How did you come up with the idea of Mapture?
The idea came up after a heated discussion about the political situation in Egypt. We used to argue a lot about the events happening every day til we figured out that we really can’t trust the pictures or videos that we see on social media or on news outlets unless we trust the people posting them. And most of the time, the people posting the stuff are opinionated or biased in one way or another.
So I just wished there was a source of content (pictures and videos) that I could trust! A source that guarantees that at least the content was captured where it says it was captured and at the time that it says it was captured.
Why would a user trust Mapture? What make this application different?
Mapture imposes a lot of security measures that allows people to only capture and upload what they’re witnessing right now. And if you see that, you would know that all the content on Mapture is verified.
This application promises the user’s anonymity, how do you guarantee that?
Mapture doesn’t take user data in the first place. It’s not like we ask you for your secrets and then promise not to tell anyone. We just don’t ask you anything. If we don’t have information about you then you have nothing to worry about!
Can the images/videos uploaded by users be taken and misused?
All the images found on Mapture are watermarked by the Mapture logo and the date and time of when it was captured. This is what you should look for when thinking about whether you should trust that image or not.
Where do you see Mapture in a few years? What do you hope to achieve?
We want Mapture to be the source of verified content around the world. We want to build a relationship of trust between us and our users. We want people to use Mapture to find out about what’s happening around the world, to verify rumours they’ve been hearing and to use us as a source of images for any kind of press.
The application is available on the app store and any device with an iOS 7, do you have plans to release the application on Android and Windows Phone?
We have plans to launch on other platforms, that’s for sure. We are just taking our time to create a good experience on one device before we start launching on other platforms.
Do you have any advice for young entrepreneurs like yourself?
Failure is mandatory! So smile when it happens. And for developers… shisha always helps.
WE SAID THIS: Don’t miss “Out of These World Photos You Won’t Believe Are in the Middle East“.
