As TechCrunch notes, IO shares more with blogging platforms like Medium than it does with social apps like Twitter or Instagram. And, in Byttow's words, IO is meant to address, "the downsides of current social media products." Specifically, Byttow and his other startup Bold hope to achieve "authentic publishing" by allowing people to post either anonymously, with a pseudonym or with their real names.

IO itself is sort of a stripped-down blogging platform or a minimalist writing app. There's nothing on the page but a white text box with optional space for a byline and a title. There are also options to pipe in some ambient background noise or to turn on a Hemingway App-style editing assistant to help clean up your prose. Behind the scenes, IO also supports markdown, images and exporting, but Byttow wrote on Product Hunt that the editor is still very much a work in progress with more improvements on the way. For now, once you hit that Publish button, you'll get a short, sharable URL to show off your work -- anonymously or otherwise.