Behind the scenes at @yuser, a #LdnOnt app that hopes to revolutionize social media @LdnIncMag

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I don’t care one whit whether people can see how many likes my posts on Instagram generate (or don’t generate, as is normally the case). There will never be enough for me to become a social media influencer, and that’s not really my goal when I post three photos of Halifax to let friends know that’s where I am that week.

Likes, mentions, retweets and the rest are all nice to get, but they are of no actual value to me. But wait. What if I could trade them in for something tangible? Small, sure. But tangible. A free coffee. A 2-for-1 lunch. Credit with an online retailer.

That would get my attention. I might spend a little more time crafting my social media posts. OK, not likely, but others might.

One more thing: What if the data I provided when posting and interacting on social media apps was guaranteed to be private and belong to me, with no Zuckerbergian slip-ups and lame apologies? I could get behind that.

That’s the basic concept – along with a smidge of blockchain wizardry – of Yuser, a new social media sharing app operating from the London Roundhouse. It’s the creation of three blue-sky thinkers who would have fit right in on the set of Halt and Catch Fire, the spectacular AMC series about the pre-Silicon Valley days of the personal computing revolution in the 1980s.

You can read all about Yuser and its founders in the October issue of London Inc. magazine, which hits the streets this month at 72 pages, its largest issue to date and proof some old technology can still work, when mixed with some tricks.

The Yuser brain trust has some great ideas for their app. They also know the odds of them succeeding on a large scale are rather long. But they have embraced the challenge and believe their concept will deliver.