APPICS App Testing !
I have been lucky enough to have the chance to be an early tester of the APPICS App. For those who are new to the idea of @APPICS, it is a reward-based social media application that plans to visually merge lifestyle, passion, and income inside a single mobile application. In simple terms you can think of it as being similar to Instagram on the blockchain with some key differences:
Firstly it will allow users to monetize their content in a way similar to the base STEEM token using Proof-of-Brain, and they plan to do this though applying one of the first Smart Media Tokens (SMT's) to be released on top of the STEEM blockchain early next year.
The second difference goes to the heart of one of the major issues people have with STEEM with respect to content discovery. APPICS will have at least 16 top level categories which will have assigned category directors who are experienced influencers in social media and entertainment that have built a positive reputation and engaged following on other social media platforms. They will be given a delegated stake and by curating content and sharing wisdom within their specialized category, the APPICS category directors act as moderators and are able to boost valuable and meaningful content.
I have over 80k followers across traditional social media; mostly on Instagram. It has been difficult, if not impossible, to bring any significant number across to STEEM given the slow and complicated account creation process and steep learning curve when they get here. The changes in HF20 which allow direct on-boarding of new users by D-Apps will allow APPICS to greatly speed up and simplify this process in an application environment that is familiar to the users coming across. You can see how the categories interact with the content discovery section in the image below.
As they wait for the SMT's to be released the testing app is running directly ontop of the STEEM blockchain, so you might have seen some of my posts say "powered by APPICS". Here is a screenshot of what the post I put up a couple of days ago looks like from within the app. APPICS is actively listening to feedback from this testing phase and the app has been evolving with regular updates.
There is some amazing potential here with APPICS. Anyone who holds STEEM has a vested interest in the success of APPICS, as they will have to hold STEEM to obtain the resource credits to onboard new users and allow them to interact with their SMT on the STEEM blockchain.
If you would like to learn a little bit more about my background in photography you can read the interview @photofeed did with me here
Robert Downie
Love Life, Love Photography
Thank you @intrepidphotos for this great introduction to @appics, I hope people who have spent time and energy building a following on steem are not sidestepped in the process.
It will be interesting to see how SMTs and Resource Credits interact.
It will be separate to main steem feed once it launches.
I also have it, but haven't started using it yet at all! Might as well give it a try I suppose! After SMTs will posts on APPICS still directly share to your Steem page, or will they be seperate?
I think they will be separate.
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howdy intrepidphotos....say this looks like a great app, I haven't heard of it before so thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Lots of Apps under development for SMT's but APPICS is one with a lot of potential.
Thank you so much, I'm going to check APPICS out.
I've yet to play with APPICS. How does this compare with Steepshot? Do photos posted on APPICS automatically show up on your Steem blog as it does for Steepshot?
For the moment it does as they are waiting for the SMT's to be released. The key difference will be the way the trending is moderated by category directors. I am not sure if Steepshot will use a SMT when they become available.
Thanks for pointing me to this article. The explanation makes a lot of sense, and has me pretty excited about @appics, and the coming SMT's release.
For me it is the curation side that is exciting. If you think of each category director like curie is now, except their will be lots of them who all have delegated stakes (in this case of the appics coin XAP ) from the corporate holdings. In the white paper they talk about the community voting on the category directors, so that will keep them honest also.