Thorough and interesting read that I largely agree with. I believe the absolute key is simply growth in the userbase. While I don’t expect most casual users to purchase Hive, and drive price & demand directly; businesses will follow where the people are.
I’ve always found Waivio to be very interesting and the vision presented in your initial proposal was right in line with my own future expectations. I fully believe in influencing behavior and rewarding people through upvotes. The fact that businesses and brands could direct their ad spend into purchasing Hive Power and voting on favorable content is incredibly powerful. Hypothetically a business could increase the visibility of positive mentions of their brand, while simultaneously rewarding their customers and promoters... and feasibly end their “ad campaign” with more capital than they started with... 🤯
We just need the bodies & eyes here to add value to this attention economy.
Today, rewards on Waivio are paid out as a combination of upvotes and liquid HIVE. It seems that companies in general are not willing to make large marketing investments, such as buying Hive Power, but are very open to pay-per-action advertising.
For example, a restaurant is open to the idea of paying, say, $5 for a new visitor. A post with two photos of a specific dish serves as proof-of-sale, which becomes the basis for the user to receive the reward.
Here are some active campaigns on Waivio: https://www.waivio.com/rewards/all (most of them are focused on restaurants in Vancouver, BC, Canada).
The reward is advertised in USD but recalculated into HIVE at the time of reward reservation. The reservation is a formal commitment by the user to write this post according to the terms.
Once the qualifying position is published on the blockchain, the Waivio campaign server calculates the payment obligations between all parties involved (company, user, other beneficiaries of the post, campaign server, index server, referral party).
This is reflected in the section Rewards/Receivables for the user and Rewards/Payables for the sponsor.
There is a special service called Matchbot, which automatically upvotes the qualified posts. Then the sponsor only has to cover the difference between the value of these votes and the reward obligations.
The upvoting accounts must be pre-registered by the sponsor, when the campaign is announced on the blockchain. The value of all other upvotes is not deducted from the reward obligations.
This approach allows for so-called guides to help companies manage their marketing campaigns on Hive.
First of all, guides collect a management fee (say 25%) on the rewards that will be distributed to qualified users, and on top of that, they can also retain the value of positive votes. Waivio supports compensation accounts to collect the difference.
It is assumed that the guides have a much better understanding of Hive dynamics and that they would be motivated to actually buy Hive Power in order to increase the profitability of their marketing business.
What's the plan for Waivio to list restaurants globally ? I know the current situation is not going to allow to expand, but is going global on the to do list ?
Waivio is an open system. Anyone can simply add restaurants, businesses, products in their area and start a guiding business (manage rewards programs for local businesses on Hive). All the tools are there today (billing, reporting, payments, blacklists, admin controls). It does not require any technical knowledge or expertise.
We are currently working on a web hosting solution, where any Hive user will be able to start a specialized social site by selecting related items (e.g. restaurants and dishes in your area), add related news and launch a fully operational site with products, news and even influencers.
I will definitely market it in my area, once everything opens up.