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St. Petersburg tech company believes it can be the next Facebook

Webtalk already has close to 500,000 users
St. Pete tech firm wants to be the next Facebook
St. Pete tech firm wants to be the next Facebook
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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — R.J. Garbowicz isn’t getting a whole lot of sleep these days.

“I’m working about 20 hours a day,” says the 35-year-old tech entrepreneur.

But that’s the reality for the CEO of Webtalk, a small downtown St. Pete company that believes it can be the next Facebook.

The social media site, which is free to use but still in invite-only mode, takes popular elements from established companies — Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and various online marketplaces — and merges them into “one-stop-shopping,” says R.J..

Webtalk, which is offering revenue-sharing to early adopters of the site to help expand its audience, already has almost half-a-million users worldwide.

R.J. says a huge part of Webtalk’s appeal is control and privacy when it comes to who sees what. 

Each of your followers can be specifically labeled — personal, private, business and so on — so “relationships in your real life” better mirror relationships “in your virtual life.”