Zappl, the Twitter Alternative Where You Can Earn Money Launches [UPDATED]
After months of preparation, and teasing, @zappl has launched on the Steem blockchain.
What Is Zappl?
Zappl is a short-form social media network, which allows its users to be upvoted and thus rewarded for their zappls zaps. Being based on the Steem blockchain, the platform offers easy sign-up and connection with already known peers/Steemians who can comment and upvote.
Zapplers (??? - hey, it's better than tweeple!), have the opportunity to set a title for each post, upload an image, and can use upto 240 characters. Beats Twitter's 140 (or 280), yet still nothing you want to see the Real Donald T. make use of.
The Zappl interface is still slightly nostalgic in design, and we found several minor errors like lack of retina-quality images, but all that should soon change as the mobile apps for Android and iOS launch, with a cleaner and more micro-blogging optimized design.
Zappl comes with a complete account management interface and you can even access your Steem Wallet on Zappl, which makes sense since when SMTs will be launched in 2018, not every Zappl user may also have a Steemit account. Yet, you can login with just your posting key. If you don't plan to claim rewards via Zappl, or prefer managing your wallet with the desktop Vessel wallet, you don't need to login with your active or master key.
As can be seen in the screenshot of the (desktop) browser UI, Zappl will offer a messaging functionality to communicate with other Steemians/Zapplrs. At the time of writing that functionality was still 'Coming soon' though. For now, if you really think you deserve that much attention, and don't want to use chat/Discord, you will still have to send a minimal fee and include your message with a financial transfer. Or use busy.org.
The clean Zappl editor
While it rests to be seen whether Steemians will adopt to the format, or Zappl will soon be the "Horror of Everything Bucket Steemit", which shows each zap as a normal post, rests to be seen.
Personally, we think that there is a bright future for a platform like Zappl, although the question of whether its eventual coin/currency will attract investors and invite stability is a serious one. Looking at counterpart Twitter, and its inability to convince advertisers to spend more on the platform, it is obvious that just Tweets don't cut it. Long term, especially after a possible ICO as SMT built on the Steem platform, this will be an intriguing question to answer and probably problem to solve.
Until then, we look forward to seeing how Zappl will grow and whether it will find a foothold in specific niches like Mastodon has, or just be a mainstream rather generalist Twitter on $teroids.
As the tune usually goes... follow us maybe and congrats to @steemitqa and the @Zappl team for the official launch. Let's Zappl that!
Update
As per Zappl's post the platform will be offline a little for some bugfixing.
Update 2
Zappl Beta has now launched, as per its latest post.
Hmm... the website appears to be down. :(
Ah, and now I see in the @steemitqa post that it will indeed be down for some bug fixes. :D
So from reading your post, it seems we don't know if it will put your zapps in our blog post areas? Personally, I'd hate to have a bunch of short "Zapps" filling up my blog wall. It'd be really annoying for others to see and really annoying for myself to see.
It does put them in your "blog", @biasnarrative. Just like it does with dTube, dMania, dSound posts. Check my previous post. ;)
Currently that is because there is no flag like do_not_not_show_on_steemit available to developers and Steemit acts as the everything bucket.
If I understand it correctly SMTs will solve that and platforms operating their own SMT will not be shown on Steemit/other platforms. Maybe there will be a flag do_show_on available but I haven’t found that info in the SMT paper.
Hopefully the block chain will soon be updated with such an option because otherwise things may become annoying. Witnesses may want to bring that up and speed up the development of that but then again for many it would mean less exposure for their new projects.
Interesting. Alright thanks!
ok, more techy stuff for me to learn, ha! xD I'll give it a go. Ive never been a tweeter or whatever they call themselves, so this should be interesting!
I've tried it out and tagged you in it too, not sure what that will do! xD
Give me a warm fuzzy feeling?
hahaha
I love the concept but the name and branding in my opinion is terrible. It won't catch on mainstream. Looking forward to the clone with better branding.
Thanks for the info :)
Interesting thoughts, @chiefmappster. I have myself struggled with the branding consistency. If it is 'Let's zappl', then why is there a button 'New ZAP'?
Less concerned by the UI as I understand the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) strategy, but the design language and brand could have been more thought out. There surely is lots of opportunities when looking at the concept as an MVP. I'm looking forward to what will happen. :)
Exactly exactlyyyyyyyy. And I will give them the benefit of the doubt because branding is hard, but you have to hire a team that can handle that for you professionally. You only have one shot at a first impression.
I am right there with ya with understanding the MVP but I think these projects need to treat themselves like start-ups. Meaning have a full team of people. You can't just have excellent coders and expect the product to take off. Needs marketing, sales, influencing, branding, among other aspects.
I am excited to see what happens that's for sure. Anything that can improve on the current condition of everything :)
Exactly exactlyyyyyyyy. And I will give them the benefit of the doubt because branding is hard, but you have to hire a team that can handle that for you professionally. You only have one shot at a first impression.
I am right there with ya with understanding the MVP but I think these projects need to treat themselves like start-ups. Meaning have a full team of people. You can't just have excellent coders and expect the product to take off. Needs marketing, sales, influencing, branding, among other aspects.
I am excited to see what happens that's for sure. Anything that can improve on the current condition of everything :)
What's the deal with this friend??? What happen to it, it's such a good idea imo
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