Proposal: Bringing A Twitter Like Service to SteemIt
In response to our first growth-idea proposal. We have now moved into the growth-proposal phase after receiving a 100 % approval to move forward to the growth-proposal phase you can see the results here. We are proud to move on into the 2nd phase!
Summary:
The idea is to create a censor resistant decentralized micro-blogging application that sits on top of the Steem Blockchain. This will allow people to quickly give updates to their life and get some value back in doing so. With the Attention Economy fresh upon us, and we are all striving to achieve a new way to bring to the masses ,but we also wanted to usher in the Activity Economy. One is not exclusive to the other ,but can handshake with each other.
Problem:
Short form micro-blogging is still a necessary format in the SteemIt ecosystem. We have the long-tail with the main SteemIt platform , but short-form is under served and the platform in it’s current form doesn’t accommodate this need well.
Solution:
Nate Brune ( @picokernel ) had envisioned a version of Twitter on SteemIt originally called Squeak. We’ve decided to expand on this vision with some better functions and features. As mentioned above, we believe in a new model (or, an additional model ) we call the Activity Economy. You cannot have an Attention Economy without the activity. We hope by providing the necessary activity, this will create the necessary network effect of value to the SteemIt eco-system as a whole. We’ll be writing more about the Activity Economy very soon.
Desired Outcome:
Proposed Development Schedule : (9 weeks )- IOS: 480 hrs
- ANDROID: 480 hrs
- Website: 480 hrs
- API: 210 hrs
- ADMIN : 180 hrs
- Mockup Designing & UI Freezing: 50 hrs
Reminder, we’ll be doing a complete re-branding overhaul of this project from From Squeak to Zappl. There will be other additional changes done which can be found below.
On launch features
- Profile Feed / Main-Page Follower feed
- Followers page
- Following page
- Categories
- Steemconnect.com login
- Normal login
- Wallet page
- Great user ui/ux
- Promoted system
- Embedding twitch, youtube and other forms of media
After launch features and goals.
- Emoji support?
- Multi lang support
- Multi lang special characters support
- Image uploading
- Private messaging system (Likely Rsa AES p2p encrypted messaging.)
- Poll system
- Tipping system
- Internal market ?
- Blocktrades integration ?
Cost:
$32,000 SBD
To start contributing to the Zappl project transfer SBD/Steem to the @Zappl account.
Early adopters who contribute will get special access to our Zapsters room at our Zappl discord channel. Let us know of the ID you used to contribue to the project and we’ll unlock the room. You’ll be able to get first access to the latest and greatest updates of Zappl and have direct access to the development team and influence decision making. Imagine having access to Jack Dorsey, or Evan Williams of Twitter early on! SO what are you waiting for become a contributor and let’s change the world with Zappl!
In Other News:
As mentioned above we have our Discord Channel so feel free to drop in and say hi! We love our SteemIt community. Want to get involved in Zappl ? Let us know what kind of role you want to play. Thanks for ALL the support!
The Zappl Team
Our social media profiles and misc:
Twitter Facebook Discord
Follow, Upvote, Comment, ReSteem, Share
@thedegensloth, @steemitqa , and @zappl
I can hardly wait. Follow, Upvote, Comment, ReSteem…
Neither can we, butThanks for the help.
Thanks.
I just followed you on Twitter, which is somewhat ironic, yet is the natural progression of things, as the new is built on the old.
I sent you a tiny bit of SBD toward your project which looks like a winner. Wishing you and the zappl team all the best!
Thanks for the support!
@keeny-crane Thanks for your support! make sure to stop into the Discord channel and say hi and make you an official Zapster :)
Yeah it really is these days if you want to make something big you have to use the old to do so.
Also thanks for the contribution every bit helps.
I like the idea of striving for this attention economy. I think the voting process should be much diferent on a microblogging service. Where on twitter there are diferent measures of engagement: simple impressions, detail expands and then likes and retweets. I see a service where just seeing a tweet or 'zapple' (hate the name but that is just me) will commit enough vests to essentially pay for the service's existence.
Now obviously likes and other features will be worth more. I think care should be given to simplify the rewarding: very small % upvotes for most all actions. Tips should be what constitutes the largest portion of rewards.
Given the size and immaturity of the steem blockchain, a microblogging service could quickly turn into just a few users making almost all the rewards for content that is not getting enough views to warrant those rewards.
Users should not be accustomed to their 140 characters making 100s of dollars.
We could agree for the most part yeah posts shouldn't be worth that much. But the community don't do well with apps trying to control their voting power. There is plenty of time to talk it over with the community as the app is being worked on.
You also got to remember a new reward curve is likely coming so those big massive votes from whales are going to be reduced a fair bit. So if you reached a 100 dollars from a couple hundred of people that's pretty fair.
But then again short form posting these days can hold a lot of impact in the world. So idk if its really fair to say who's posts are worth what. If people don't agree with the worth of the post they will flag it as such as they do now.
Well I'll be here for the experiment!
Well thanks.
I don't think that's what's happening here. It seems like these guys (this guy?) are going to use the Steem posting operation for their "tweets", which means rewards will come directly out of Steem's general reward fund. This means that ordinary Steem whales could still shut down abuse with downvotes, and whale upvotes will still be necessary for content to get 100s of $.
Certainly right. There is a lot to get right if steem is the universal media chain. I honestly expect something else to learn come along, learning from steem, LBRY etc.
Upvoted, followed, resteemed & SBD contributed
Well thanks blocklabs
Thank you for your support @blocklab
Its alive!!!! It only took a zap
Zapplino is the way it go's.
Good luck! I'll send some SBD soon!
Well thanks.
I see the SBD Contribution thank you!
Thanks for the contribution and support!
I support this project. Upvoted and tipped. All the best!
well thanks for the support.
Thanks @pnc for the support.
Thanks for the contribution and support!
Spent most of my accounting career in startups and turn-arounds so I have a soft spot for scrappy startups. I contributed a few SBDs to the project as well and look forward to checking out the finished product.
All my best .
Well thanks for the help @lpfaust,
Oh what kinda start ups did you deal with is you don't mind us asking?
In the tech sphere, two start-ups were in the digital advertising/marketing space. One was a marketing firm in the purest sense, but focused on digital advertising, marketing and internet lead generation when the space was relatively young. The second, which I recently jumped into, offers SaaS solutions for anonymous website visitor tracking. I was surprised how much the accounting rules have changed since I stepped away from the space for a bit.
I also consulted for a company in the labor/staffing space tying to do what Chronobank is currently doing, only 10 years earlier and before blockchain tech existed. Unfortunately that did not work out.
Outside of the tech space, I've been involved in startups in a couple of different industries: architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing and publishing. I have always appreciated and loved being part of a scrappy startup. The friendships I made with colleagues while in the trenches in those places have lasted, and the feeling that comes with the major wins cannot be matched. It was and continues to be some of the best times of my career.
Well that an amazing spread you got their well thanks for your contribution and i hope we can make this one more of those projects you talk about down the line. Also there should be a posting coming later or tomorrow explaining what perks the backers for the project will have. Besides just being on a page for the site that shows backers.
@zappl very cool I will check it out. To be perfectly honest, I didn't donate for the perks. While I appreciate them, I donated to see you and the team have a shot a living your dream.
Take care and best of luck to you.
Well just thought id let you know and thanks.
Thanks for the contribution and support!
How do we know zappl isn't going to go the way of squeak?
Sorry for the provocative kinda question but there has been so many projects dropped on steemit...it's a little hard to take anything seriously anymore..
Well squeak was only stopped because nate was hired on as an intern at steemit as well he was still in high school. He became busy with more pressing matters, nates not apart of out team we are just taking up where he left off.
Yes we had chats with the community about how people would get large sums then stop. We have no plans to stop in fact other then the amount needed at the start all funds will be held in the saving system so everything will be transparent.
Everything other then 35% will be left in the savings. before if we take any out of the saving we will make a post and explain the next milestone of the project. We are professional developers And will treat this community with the respect it deserves.
I think you need to consider putting up a completed roadmap, key milestones, key challenges, how you plan to grow the product and the support staff a well.
You may also want to consider some method of Escrow for the funds (such as a multi-sig wallet) and possibly have a monthly report letting your investors know how those funds were spent and how much is earmarked for future milestones.
There is a distinct difference to the mindset of a donor (such as me in this case) and an investor.
How the funds will be handled has been posted in the question pfunk asked above. But yes we do plan on going over all this. But since we are crowd funding we aren't really dealing with investors per-say.
Investors would be looking for a return on their investment were looking for funding from donors so to speak. We have already had some talks with V/C'S and we don't want to have to go that route.
An investor and donor are two different things, investors look for that profit and could stop certain development of things that don't seem profitable to build. Donors more or less help fund the development and help contribute ideas not dictate from that back.
There is nothing wrong with the investor approach, we just like that idea community driven support more then we do being persuaded not to work on certain features because they seem to controversial. But if we can't get the funds we need there is a chance we might have to do to V/c's Aka Venture Capitalist.
But either way yes we will go over all this such as perks and rewards for those who donate to the development of the new platform we are trying to build.
The next phase ( the 3rd phase ) is requesting we do more roadmap'ish, key milestones and challenges. So I suspect you'll be seeing it. Thanks for the feedback.
It's a fair question @snowflake glad @zappl can address it.
Will be following this project for sure
Well look forward to many more updates on our progress as this project go's on.
Thanks for the support!
Of course!