Introducing Howdoo, an Incentivized Blockchain Based Social Platform
Howdoo is launching in 3 days.
It rides on the Ethereum blockchain, and uses Ether for the incentives.
Users are "incentivized to share their outputs, their attention, and their processing power."
Privacy and choice are its main selling points:
Privacy: You don't provide any more personal data than you want to, compared with Facebook which collects nearly 100 data points about its users.
Choice: According to them, it's "a new model for social networking, and one that values individual contribution and participation over any ‘insidious centralized algorithm’". You get to set your own parameters. At least to a point. How this works out in practice will be interesting.
It's designed to allow sellers to engage with buyers in a way the buyers want to be engaged. There are financial incentives for engaging with those who have products to offer. It will be interesting to see if the "sellers" don't get burnt out on all the buyers gaming them just for the incentives.
If they don't get the right "formula" the sellers will not realize a good return for their efforts and will exit the ecosystem and the whole thing flops.
It remains to be seen if its a good place for people whose product is knowledge, like authors, to find a good way to connect with people who want that knowledge.
Is it competition for Steemit? Hard to say. Some Steemians may try it out, but the ones who have invested the most in Steemit are the ones who are least likely to switch. Those new to Steemit stand the best chance of leaving. It does seem to address one issue people have with Steemit, and that's the tyranny of the distribution system which keeps influence and financial benefit in the hands of an oligarchy.
Conversely, it could be possible that Howdoo will introduce the concept of a social platform riding on a blockchain to people who haven't ventured into the crypto space who might in turn discover Steemit. Pioneering companies are always spending a lot of effort in educating the public and actually help each other out in that regard. Competition then becomes a matter of being there when someone finally makes a decision to make a "purchase".
Will this raise the legitimacy of Ethereum in particular and cryptocurrency in general with the public and help cryptocurrency become more mainstream? The article referenced above does not make a case for why this social platform needs to operate in the cryptocurrency universe. Investors are looking for utility that can only be accomplished with blockchain technology, not just another use that could be accomplished through traditional means.
That said, if this platform succeeds, it will increase the use of cryptocurrency, shifting use away from fiat money, as more commerce is accomplished apart from fiat money. And as an added bonus, this model will draw more companies into using cryptocurrency who might not otherwise do so. That will increase acceptance of cryptocurrency by the general public. When Amazon starts accepting Ether for payment hold on to your seat. According to this article:
A fictional deal with Visa raised the value of the Monaco cryptocurrency by almost 700%. Any deal with Amazon will rocket the partner cryptocurrency upwards. If Amazon chooses to go this route it probably wouldn’t kill bitcoin, but whatever coin they went with could knock bitcoin out of its top spot.
