By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Richard Glanton has rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful figures in business and politics, served as president of the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania and mingled at the highest levels of government and the corporate world.
Now 69, he has turned to his next venture: a social media platform called ElectedFace that, originally, was conceived as a way for citizens to connect with their political representatives. The idea grew to include universities to communicate with students and others, churches and houses of worship with their members, public figures and businesses with their employees.
“So why would somebody want to join this?” he asks rhetorically during an interview inside the Princeton Public Library, in the town the Georgia native calls home. “Because what it does is, basically, allows for anyone to talk to all of their constituents, anytime they want to, with one click.”
Mr. Glanton makes no secret that he wants to make money, lots of it, off this venture. But he also sees it connecting the politicians and the people they serve “in a way that hasn’t been done since the agrarian society existed.”
“I believe that if people have access and the people in office hear their voices, they’ll respond,” he said. “The only reason they respond the way they do now is because our government has become a captive audience of big business. And they’re the only ones with real access.”
Among its features, ElectedFace enables users to get news, post videos, chat and even have free long-distance phone conversations — a sort of hybrid of Twitter and Facebook. “It includes attributes of both, but it’s much more,” he said of a business that has a staff of about 40 people, the majority of whom are in India.
To Mr. Glanton, this is the equivalent of one-stop shopping for social media, akin to people going to Walmart to buy their groceries, clothes and TV sets all under one roof.
“We want to be, we intend to be,” he said. “We’re going to make it so that people can basically go to ElectedFace, have a conversation with their elected official, so that a parent at a school doesn’t have to leave home in the snow and can have that parent-teacher conference at night, so that that psychologist can talk to her patient without having to leave their home.”
In his foray into social media, Mr. Glanton has made a hefty financial investment — $6 million so far. This, he said, is different business model that comes with no guarantees for success. He estimates that the site would need 5 million active users to make it profitable.
“We need a million bucks just for advertising to make this work,” he said. “So I’m not going at warp speed. I’m not some big company financed by anybody.”
So how to get politicians to sign up, or that matter anyone else?
Money and marketing.
Mr. Glanton said that for every 100,000 active users that politicians or others have on their accounts, they get roughly $3,000 a month from the advertising revenue ElectedFace earns. The amount is less if someone has fewer followers.
“You bring the followers, the elected officials will come,” he said.
He is eyeing to have “several” million users in the next six months, a goal that having a celebrity endorser might help him to achieve. Though disdainful of superficiality and the dumbing down of America, he cites celebrity Kim Kardashian — with 39.9 million followers on her Twitter account — as an example of someone with the ability to get users to ElectedFace and build the brand. To Mr. Glanton, those followers spell gold.
“Look at what people do today, who do they follow,” he said. “These people say anything, and everybody wants to read it. If Kim Kardashian says, ‘I want you to follow me on ElectedFace,’ tomorrow we could have 10 million users just like that.”
In a life spent both in the public and private sectors, he has connections that run deep. The names of politicians that Mr. Glanton knows run the gamut; he worked for former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh, helped President George H. W. Bush win the White House and went to the same Chicago gym as Barack Obama.
His biography reads like a who’s who of top law firms and companies he’s worked for and the boards he has sat on.
“Whatever access you have is fleeting. Everything in life is,” he said. “People think you have power and money, you can pretty much do whatever you want to. But if they don’t, they’re not listening to you. When this has a lot of people, people will be kissing my ring like Caesar.”
