Some folks find a lot of Facebook posts offensive, so a group of evangelical Christians in Brazil have put together a good-news-only Facebook copycat called Facegloria.
The real Facebook isn’t happy, and sent a cease and desist letter warning that the company is infringing on its trademark and could create consumer confusion.
“Like any company, we have to protect our brand,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNNMoney.
Facebook, which has 1.2 billion active users, lets users hide and report content they find offensive.
Facegloria has attracted 100,000 users since it launched in June, and sees Brazil’s growing evangelical population as a huge market opportunity.
It has banned over 600 words, erotic content, violence and, in a country that legalized same-sex marraige two years before the United States did, any reference to homosexuality.
Instead of ‘Like,’ its users click ‘Amen.’
The Brazilian site wants to expand globally and has already bought the English domain Faceglory.com. In fact, co-founder Atilla Barros wants to meet with Mark Zuckerberg about teaming up with Facebook.
“In my humble opinion, Mark is a genius and could help us and even be our godfather in this hard and long walk,” Barros wrote in an e-mail to CNNMoney.
“I cannot deny [Zuckerberg’s] great ideas were a great encouragement to me,” he added. “I think he also would not want that his network to become a place for pornography, violence, etc.”
Such a partnership seems unlikely.
But Hunter College economics professor Lisa Gorge says that there may indeed be a market for Facegloria made up of social conservatives who reject mainstream social media because of the “open sexuality, alcohol consumption and other vices that it often features.
