ChainBB is a forum-style front-end for the steem blockchain. Built by legendary steem developer @jesta, it’s an attempt to create a viable steemit alternative that encourages longer conversations.
I love the idea of ChainBB. It reminds me of the internet I fell in love with as a teenager, back when I would waste a million hours every day browsing and conversing on GameFAQs and (later on) Something Awful.
Back then, I struggled with social anxiety and had a hard time going out to meet people. The internet was a wonderful alternative, for better or worse, giving me access to social circles that were easy to participate in. I could read threads about anything, posting comments when I had something to share.
Nowadays I’m a social animal, way different from back then. But I do often miss the old forum experience. It’s cool to have a clear digital place to hang with your online friends.
Good Things About ChainBB
Here’s what I like about ChainBB.
Jesta is doing a tremendous job of communicating and being transparent with the platform’s development. I love the way that he rolled out the new forum creation system, asking (and taking to heart) advice on the best way to do it.
The idea that anybody can create and monetize their own subforum is an awesome idea. It’s a natural way to start working towards building our own steem communities with SMTs.
I love the idea of alternative steem interfaces. I want steem to proliferate beyond the steemit ecosystem. I want our own Twitter, our own Instagram, our own forum… and now we have all those things. My goal is to keep pushing forward on this idea, and ChainBB is a great area of development for that goal.
Problems With ChainBB
There are two main problems right now that I’m seeing with ChainBB:
(1) The Interface Doesn’t Look Good
No offense, but the interface needs a lot of work. For one thing, there are now many dozens of subforums all listed alphabetically on the home page - it’s overwhelming. More importantly, it just feels like the layout is a bit overwhelming and clunky:
(2) People Don’t Really Understand ChainBB
People are still using ChainBB as a way to view steemit posts. This is a bit awkward because after the first day of posting, most people stop looking at old steemit posts. The conversation ends.
The point of ChainBB is to keep the conversation going. You can have a single “Megathread” that survives for weeks or even years, with comments continuing to earn rewards as the thread goes on. Steemians just aren’t in that mindset yet. It’s hard to explain what steem is, then explain what ChainBB is, then get people to commit to trying the new interface… IDK.
Zappl did a better job of marketing itself clearly - people understand that it’s a Twitter clone. It feels like users aren’t as sure of how to use ChainBB.
Hoping For a Strong Future
I want to support as many good steem front-ends as is possible. The future of steem is in a prolific array of different platforms, all powered by the core steem token.
That’s why I will continue to promote and nurture my BEATMAKERS ON STEEM ChainBB subforum. I’ll keep posting all my beats through there (you can see them on Steemit too) and will try to continue conversation in the forum’s first MEGATHREAD about the steem music ecosystem.
Will ChainBB succeed? It’s possible. I think the user interface needs a big overhaul ASAP for that to happen, TBH.
What do you think of ChainBB?
I've made a few posts under MAP, but freely admit I just don't get it!
So, if you understand that Steemit is not Steem.... Then you understand that Steem is the blockchain. The actual data. And Steemit just allows you to access that data, choosing how you get to see it.
ChainBB is basically a different way to look at the data. While Blog posts on Steemit are sorted by time of the original post being posted. ChainBB actually has posts up by most recent text activity it seems. By text activity I mean the original post get's put to the top, and then anytime someone comments the post goes to the top. This allows for the conversations to continue like @heymattsokol stated.
The posts inside the forums topics in ChainBB are controlled by a few things.
The ability for somebody to bring up a security topic and have it constantly brought back to light with important conversation is huge. In the future, there will also be the ability to pin posts to the tops of forums. This would also be extremely beneficial, speaking about security cause its easy, to pin to the top the best security guides to protect your Steem wallet.
So.....I was asked to place an introductory post under the MAP forum on Chainbb. Then post links to my posts that I have created on my blog (using esteem) as a reply under that introductory post. How would this benefit me?
Sry I don't know what MAP stands for lol. What is that?
Sorry..It is one of the forums on chainbb. Minnows Accelerator Project. New forum. It's the only forum I have attempted to join in on at chainbb, so far!
Ahh gotcha thank you for letting me know. I'll try to check that out
I get it, it's a forum and I use to post a lot on forums when I was heavy into gaming, but honestly I like this kind of platform better as I'm trying to grow influence with my knowledge on making money with cryptocurrency and trading.
That's totally reasonable, out of curiosity I wanna ask: why do you think this platform is better than the chainBB one in terms of growing influence? They both share the same pool of posts
Which is true, but no one really uses forums that much. There are still plenty of active ones out there, but social media is the new wave, so basically what I'm saying is that forums are a bit out-dated, but if you have a strong community then it can definitely work.
That's true as fuck! I was actually thinking a similar thing. ChainBB is so old school, it might find a niche but it's unlikely to get traction like reddit or Twitter or FB etc
Exactly, so my advice would be is to stick to what's relevant.
I've spent a lot of time on forums, but people seem to have moved away from them to social sites these days. They were good for focused discussion of a topic. Maybe some communities will move to ChainBB. I've just not used it much yet. I'm eager to see what form Steemit communities will take.
Yeah that's true... similar to what @thelavishtrader said in their comment. ChainBB is fun anyway... though I do think the real winner will be MangoChat if that ever becomes a real thing. It's a similar idea of discussing topics with friends, but the real time chat thing was cool.
Too bad that service never developed, but Brian told me he does still want to do it, he said he's just thinking. For now, I'll keep playing with ChainBB.