Twyn: Bringing Fans Face-to-Face with Lionel Messi Through Conversational AI
Twyn is a technology platform that aims to offer a unique interactive and personalized experience to users by combining natural language processing, conversational psychology, conversation management systems, and artificial intelligence. The platform allows fans to have one-on-one spoken interactions with their favorite celebrities, experts, and individuals across various fields, as if they were on a FaceTime call. Founder Tim Levy, a media and entertainment veteran, envisioned the platform as a way to scale one-on-one conversations with celebrities and other notable figures, reaching millions of people simultaneously while still feeling like a personal, individual FaceTime call.
However, Levy found that talent agents were understandably concerned about protecting the brand of their clients and hesitant to use generative AI to digitally scale them. As a result, Twyn had to find a way to operate within controlled parameters, creating authentic, personally authored, and carefully managed content experiences that remained safe for both talent and users within a limited domain. Because every answer is personally authored by the talent themselves, the experience carries no reputational risk and remains fully authentic. Twyn created a way for visual content to become conversationally interactive, offering an entirely new way of telling stories and sharing information.
Twyn’s methodology produces visually interactive content that feels like a genuine one-on-one conversation with the talent, and their first project is with soccer superstar Lionel Messi. Messi is producing a commemorative boot made from recycled ocean plastics, with plans for ten versions released over the next three years, each one, aside from the first, created in collaboration with other world leading talent. The Messi team was already planning to deliver digital benefits to buyers, and the concept of offering in-person engagement as an additional buyer benefit proved especially compelling.
Inside the Messiverse
Users can select from a range of experiences within the Messiverse, the world in which Lionel Messi’s fans can interact with him directly. Messi has committed to six episodes of content, with global collaborators featured in additional episodes. When users select an episode, they’re introduced to the experience by a system that explains how the technology works and what to expect. In the first episode, users meet Messi’s best friend, who shares inside secrets about Messi and how best to interact with him. From there, the user enters a three way conversation with Messi and his best friend, discussing Messi’s five greatest goals. Users can ask questions and even digitally recreate the goals to earn rewards for their collection, adding a layer of gamification to the overall experience.
Never before has visual content been conversationally interactive in real time. Messi will be actively promoting the experience, so a strong volume of users is anticipated. As the platform grows, the team also expects Messi to help persuade other soccer players to join, allowing Twyn to build out material with additional players over time. The global collaborators involved are also expected to each create at least one episode of their own.
Built to Scale Across Sports and Beyond
The Messiverse has been built with content creation partner Box to Box Films, the team behind Drive to Survive, the Formula 1 behind the scenes documentary, Break Point, covering the ATP tour, Full Swing, covering the PGA, and Tour de France: Unchained, among other projects. As a result of this collaboration, it becomes a natural next step to approach Formula 1, the ATP, and the PGA about building their own Messiverse style experiences. Plans also include expanding beyond sports into industries such as film and music, with essentially no limit to the range of talent capable of creating this kind of mass intimacy with fans.
Is your business model subscription based or advertising based?
That’s a good question. Leo Messi obviously has a significant project underway, and we’re essentially a companion piece to it. Our deal with Messi involves earning a set amount for every boot sold, putting us on a revenue share arrangement tied directly to his project. We also have the ability to sell subscriptions to Messi fans who don’t purchase the boot itself. So our first major project blends both revenue share and subscription models.
As a partner to talent and talent organizations, we’re enabling them to deliver an entirely new kind of experience to their fans. Depending on the partnership, we may also pursue a fixed and variable licensing fee, subscription, or advertising based model.
When are you planning to fully launch?
We’ve been running a couple of beta programs in unrelated areas over the past fifteen months, from which we’ve learned a tremendous amount. We’re currently targeting June for a prelaunch version.
How do you see the trajectory of Twyn?
Ultimately, there are two paths to building massive value here. Becoming the dominant player in the talent domain is our current focus, and forming a strategic alliance with a global talent agency such as Endeavor makes a lot of sense for us. Beyond that, another goal is building a platform that allows every individual and every enterprise on the planet to create their own Twyn. That’s genuinely part of our long term objective, and the implications are quite profound, since it begins to reshape how social media itself functions and creates an entirely new form of social influence.
Just to give you a sense of the commercial potential, we believe the Messiverse alone, without any expansion beyond its current parameters, could generate up to 100 million dollars in revenue over the next three years. If we can build similar platforms around other talent, this business has the potential to scale in an extraordinary way. I see no reason why, with a bit of luck, strong execution, and the right partners, we couldn’t build a multibillion dollar business.
The other thing worth emphasizing is that we’re really a content led technology company. Without the technology, delivering this experience simply wouldn’t be possible, but content remains our true differentiator. That’s where the real magic happens. Think of us as something like an interactive version of YouTube, where we maintain control over the conversational arc. The more personalization we can offer, the better the experience becomes for the end user. The Messiverse is just the beginning of what promises to be a groundbreaking platform, one offering an entirely new way to share knowledge, entertainment, and stories.
