Blockchain-Based Social Media: Are They Attempting To Unseat Steemit?

nairadaddy (65)in #steem • 7 years ago

Hello Steemians,

As the steem blockchain and its associated smart media grows, so many people have taken the notice and have gone back to strategize on ways to take our crown. Are they trying hard enough yet? I can say its a "yes" and "no".

"Competition is good!" we all know that. But before you compete with something make sure your product/service is at least better than that which you want to compete with. Or you cater to a different market. Or you have a promotion plan far superior to your adversaries'. Infact, you must bring something new to the table.

MEMO.CASH

The prompt for this writeup was a result of the news that there's a new social network on top of the BCH (bitcoin cash) social platform known as Memo.Cash.

From their UI designs alone I could tell that they have lost it; That is if their game plan is to reach a mass adoption. Perhaps they are planning to retain their users by helping them transact and interact with each other on their chain without going somewhere else.

Even at that, with the transaction fees being deducted for every account, tips and messages sent its not scalable. If you are looking for a way to introduce non-crypto experts into the blockchain and keep them, then steem is still your best bet.

ONO SOCIAL

ONO has been announced too. Its created by a Chinese lady Xu Ke who has had quite alot of experience with such social apps. It will be launched on the EOS blockchain operating system and is scheduled to carter to a Chinese audience/market first before any other market.

Oh No! will be trading with the ONOT tokens which will be on the EOS mainnet. According to their whitepaper, they are fully democratic and its created for the people.

I don't know whether this is remotely a competitor to steem but I know that they have the potential to steal our Chinese and Korean market. Those guys are super active on social media and once they can have their own version of anything, they flock to it like bees.

NARRATIVE

The other day I came across the whitepaper of Narrative. I could say they have something going for them. From what I can tell, they plan on being like Reddit with communities (that wasn't what they called it) and post rating.

The post rating feature is what I appreciated most about it. Like instead of just voting for a post, you had a rating system. You curate and rewards are shared/distributed based on the post rating. Thats a great feature.

However, the communities/major tags are going to be owned by people who are termed Founders. To be a founder you only have to buy such a tag by getting $5000 worth of the NRTV token which happens to an ERC-20 token. I dunno whether oligarchy is back again.

SOLA

I think SOLA.ai does actually have potential. Their algorithm is totally different. I appreciate the fact that they use machine-learning and AI to distribute content in an equitable way.

Now instead of the follower model where content is to be seen by only your followers, they have modified it into what I term the viral model. This automatically distributes a given content all around the platform. The users can then decide to upvote/swipe it or skip it.

Just like we have Steem Power over here, you have Action Point on Sola as well as SOL tokens. They call their posts, cards and their followers, prioritization. Cool.

However, till it gets its own blockchain, its yet to be a more conducive environment for longterm cryptocurrency based social platform as long as its still on the buggy ethereum network.

Are they attempting to Unseat Steemit?

In as much as we would all love to see Utopia, it may not happen the way we want it to. My mindset is still that, as long as any platform is going to be populated by humans, no matter the algorithms, things always go a little differently than planned. Selfishness and greed get in the way as good people try to do what they do.

EOS may promise us Steemit 2.0 but who knows what will become of it when launched? The same problems will still be faced largely. How do we handle it when it presents itself? What do we do?

Only time will tell the destiny of steem. I looks great though but it still needs the refinement of more work. Our dear promised Communities feature and SMTs could be the keys to our indomitability.

Will @Ned and the Steemit Inc team take the good shots?