App Review: CNNCT

Photo credit: EVG company

Having a place or an app to use when you want to connect to people around the world, learn their culture or simply seeing their environment is just amazing. Personally I use this app to divert my attention from my full time job which is sometimes exhausting for me. There are times I am bored and I am just going online on CNNCT and voila! My boredom has vanished! 

The concept of the app is to travel around the world while you're at home. Users can learn about other culture and many more. 

I had the privilege to chat with Igor Monakhov, a highly successful Russian IT entrepreneur, who founded the new video chat app CNNCT.

Me: Tell me about the people behind CNNCT.

Igor: It's a project very dear to me. I gathered a team of young, ambitious and open-minded people who share my vison.

Me: What inspired you to create CNNCT?

Igor: Well, I faced an interesting problem at a former project of mine. In 2011, the team Fotostrana, a photo sharing and social network website, asked me to deal with the fact that a lot of people were leaving their website. I had a look and realized that a lot of people were leaving because some users made them uncomfortable. You see, users on some website had very different goals. When someone like a married man or woman, or even someone happy in their relationship, is constantly confronted by people using the website as a dating site, they are uncomfortable. They just want to find pen-pals around the world, to discuss anything they feel like.

I felt touched by the issue. That's when I realized I had a solution. I want to create an application where people feel safe to chat and discuss. 

Me: What's the vision and mission of CNNCT?

Igor: The vision I have is of an application where people from around the world chat and discuss, make new friends, share interests and have inspiring and interesting conversation in a safe and cozy environment.

Me: How do you see CNNCT on the long term?

Igor: I believe that everyone has something worthwhile to say and everyone is worth listening to. We all have different areas of expertise and we should all have the opportunity to share our thoughts, our visions, or opinions. On CNNCT, everyone will have that opportunity. 

Based on our conversation, I imagine that this app shouldn't be a place for nudity, racism, sex chat or any unpleasant behavior. However, with my time of stay in this app, I had experienced a lot of nasty things such as people masturbating, men asking women to show their naked bodies or show their bodies with clothes on, couple having sex, a woman giving her partner a blow job and even racism. I also happen to experience women ending the call when they see they are connected to fellow women because their goal in the app is to find a foreign boyfriend. I feel very sad because it is very difficult for me to talk to women from the Philippines where I come from because they have a different goal in using the app and not applying it's concept. I have used the app for more than a month and I got connected to many Filipino women but I only happen to have a good conversation with 2 women. 

If I am going to talk about improvement, I hope CNNT will ban those people automatically when they are doing nasty things. 

What I love so much about CNNT is that it connects you to anyone which means you can meet someone who lives somewhere. I won't like an app that will let me choose which country the person I will be meeting online is from.

I have met a lot people from all over the world; countries I only read online and know nothing about it. With that it made me more open-minded about other people's culture. I have learned so much about the Muslim community which I never heard of before, their way of living,  political and economic situation and most importantly their views about terrorism. Now, I came to realize that those are the things that are never shown on TV and that most of the news we see is definitely one-sided. 

Thanks CNNCT for opening a virtual world for people who would love to expand their horizon!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, this app will be discontinued from October 30,2017. It's so sad to see it go.