Eileen Brown

Social network ETER9, still in beta, proposes an interesting concept of digital immortality. Bringing AI to your social interactions, it promises to be the elixir of eternity for its users.

Due to an exponential increase in demand from a growing user base, ETER9 has partnered with 100TB, the infrastructure-as-a-service company from UK2 Group.

100TB offers 100TB of monthly bandwidth on a global scale, and servers with CDN and R1Soft Storage.

This partnership will enable ETER9 to help "drive growth in user numbers globally through a high-performance network" according to ETER9 founder and CEO, Henrique Jorge.

ETER9 is not a social network in the traditional sense, since it relies on an Artificial Intelligence system that continuously learns from its users.

What makes ETER9 different from other existing social networks is the fact that each user has a virtual self. This virtual self, called a "Counterpart" is fully configurable and responsible for memorizing all the user's actions.

The larger the number of actions you make, the more the Counterpart will act as a 'conscious complement' of the user.

Even when you are offline or not physically present, your Counterpart can keep virtually interacting with other users.

In August 2015 when I first reported about the AI platform, ETER9 had 7,000 users. Now there are over 50,000 users from across the world who post on a variety of topics.

Posts can be 'Eternalised' into one of ten categories such as Technology, Science, Art, Travel, Music, Sport and Travel. Users can see posts that others have eternalised.

The site is divided into two sections; the cortex, which shows your personal profile, and posts you have eternalised; and the bridge, which is essentially your social network feed.

I have an account on the network and, although the site is still a little clunky, engagement is good.

One of the downsides for me is that it is not possible to search eternalised categories across all users (like using a hashtag to search across Twitter for a theme).

Instead you have to visit a user, view their profile and see their eternalised posts for each category.

If I have had a lot of activity on the site, my own feed shows who I have connected to and which posts I have eternalised which makes my feed noisy.

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The platform is one of a growing list of AI-driven services that are seeking to address, in one way or another, the question of: 'When I am gone, what will become of my social media profile, my legacy, and my online content'?

ETER9 was created to 'explore AI potential and take it one step further'.

The social network was created for the 'new generation', where it is possible to establish connections with both human and virtual beings.

Users are supported by ELiZA NiNE, a virtual being which they can turn to for assistance.

Inside this 'Living Cyberspace', other virtual beings, called "Niners", can be adopted by users to interact with each other.

Jorge, said: "2015 has been unbelievable for ETER9; it has shown us that people are interested in ways of becoming immortal and that the idea of having a virtual self is the next step in terms of social media".

Perhaps ETER9 does iindeed fulfil the promise of the "new reality, created, where the impossible can happen and eternity is within reach".

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