Septaš
 Logo of Sena/Septaš (2019-present) | |
| Formation | September 8, 2002 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Gaks Klevej and others |
| Founded at | Merēta, Eiria |
| Type | Private corporation |
| Headquarters | New Riga, Eiria |
| Services | Social networking, news, video hosting (formerly), dating |
Membership (2026) | Approximately 200 million monthly users |
Staff (2022) | 480 |
| Website | septas.com, sena.com |
Septaš is an Eirian social media corporation, known for its flagship social media platform known as Septaš in Eiriphone nations and Sena internationally. Founded in Eiria in 2002, Sena offers short-form text posts to users, which other users can comment, reshare, and like. The company was banned in Eiria between 2009 and 2011, yet remained in operation abroad and rebranded its platform as Sena. Since being legalized in Eiria, Septaš/Sena has become among the world's most popular social media platforms, with over 200 million monthly users on its website and app.
History[edit | edit source]
Septaš was founded in 2002 by a collective of seven computer science graduate students at Eiria's Krastalen Provincial University led by Gaks Klevej. The name is derived from the Eirian phrase "Sarjit den salkisei ut sept tašei" ("Say ten hellos and seven goodbyes"), a saying that emphasizes living life in a carefree, sociable manner. Upon its founding, Septaš was a website intended for socialization and professional networking, and became rapidly very popular among university students. The emerging casual culture of the website (posts were originally capped at 300 characters) led the socialization features to become predominant. Septaš was incorporated as a corporation in 2003, with Gaks Klevej as CEO.
In 2009, under the Darrin dictatorship in Eiria, Septaš was seized by the government and the Septaš website brought down, allegedly as a risk to national security but in fact to further consolidate the regime's power and quash dissent. Although Klevej and other leaders and lead programmers of the company were placed under state surveillance and subjected to legal harassment, original founder Ana Depras fled overseas to Laeral, which at the time had the primary infrastructure for Septaš's operations abroad. Depras and other Septaš staff who had emigrated from Eiria founded Sena, a clone of the Septaš website which would operate abroad. Sena became popular internationally, particularly in Eastern Hesperida, and upon the fall of the Darrin regime, Sena was brought under the ownership of the Septaš corporation. Sena and Septaš have subsequently been fully merged, with users of either site or app able to view and interact with users of the other; the Septaš branding is used in Eirian-speaking nations, while the website is known as Sena abroad.
Sena grew in popularity internationally during the late 2010s. Its user base rapidly expanded, and it acquired mainstream popularity; elected officials, governments, and celebrities became active on the platform. As Sena expanded, it faced growing divisions over commercial and technical issues among the company's original founders. The issues came to a head in a 2017 controversy where it was revealed that Sena had employed minimal safeguards around user data and had shared user data with government intelligence agencies. Septaš faced numerous lawsuits around user privacy, the majority of which were settled. Founding CEO Gaks Klevej resigned as a result of the controversy, and the company became publicly traded in 2018.
Services[edit | edit source]
Registration for Sena is free, although users can pay a monthly subscription fee (Sena Plus) to unlock premium features such as video downloading, larger file size for video uploads, more detailed post analytics, monetization through Sena's Creators Program, the removal of the character cap for posts, and additional profile customization, including music. Although Sena is a text-forward platform, users can post text, images, and videos; posts are capped at 400 characters for free users. By default, all Sena posts are viewable by all users, although users can choose to limit views on their posts to only friends. Users can like, reshare, and comment on posts.
Sena users can customize their profile pages with a wide variety of colors and backgrounds, and profile page layouts and designs, known as "palettes." Sena also has a dedicated news feed which allows users to browse news articles from international and local outlets. Sena Dating is a dating service run through the app, with algorithmic matchmaking. Septaš also offered video hosting from 2006 to 2009, but discontinued the service due to its competitors.