SAPIENS ARE HERE & IT'S GOOD NEWS!

Why STEEMIT's competition SAPIEN is welcome news

The planned launch of Sapien, a decentralised social media platform, has the potential to further expand user base of content creators on blockchain. This is one of the most exciting news in recent times ever since the establishment of Steemit itself. Media has been one sector that has positively benefited from the early adoption of blockchain.

Sapien plans to build their social media platform on the Ethereum blockchain and their ICO is ending on March 28th. The pre-sale of its token started on 31st January. SPN has collected $12 million in two hours of their token sale. In an interview with @David Packman on Dtube, Sapien CEO and co-founder Ankit Bhatia promises a more "democratic platform". The users wishing to create content and curate on this platform need not "power up" or bring in large amounts of cash into the system to be heard.

According to Bhatia, this is the fundamental flaw with the Steemit platform where minnows are lost and not heard because of users with large SP reserves. Sapien promises to be different according to
Bhatia: "Your expertise is reflected in a social context. And it's not something that can be bought." What it means is content creators will just have to work their way through better reputation. This will happen only by posting fresh content. No botting, and no powering up. Your build your reserves from scratch through publishing good content and attracting a following.

We know how some steemians are unhappy with the whole idea of botting and powering up using investments leaving some users disgruntled. Especially users outside the western world, with far less earning capacity, it will be an uphill task on a platform like Steemit if they cannot power up in the beginning. To be heard, you need to Power Up with a decent Steem Power, and a decent Steem power in current situation is 4000 SP or a balance of $10,000 approx. This is a huge ask for most users on the platform.

With Sapien coming onboard from end of April, the user base for content creators outside Facebook and on blockchain will expand. Every competitor ultimately works towards the same goal which is increasing and expanding your industry. Your battle with your competitor will make news for the general public, which will in return entice new users to try the platform. We want more people to talk about Steemit and this will happen only if there's competition.

When Facebook was born, there was Orkut in the scene already. Yahoo Chat and community groups were popular. MSN and Myspace was also quite out there. What Facebook did was simply buy up existing models, adapt ideas from platforms like Orkut and Yahoo. It finally became this giant platform that we know of now. If you look at the history of Facebook, it got where it is now by amalgamating, merging, buying into several ideas.

Similarly, Steemit has the first mover advantage. But it's surely not going to be the last one. Sapien will further democratise and simplify the platform. Bringing in more ideas into the blockchain on media industry. Sapien is welcome and I can't wait to start using it.

You can get to know more about Sapien on: https://www.sapien.network/#0
Watch @davidpackman's interview with Ankit Bhatia here: https://dlive.io/video/davidpakman/167f6f60-2bb7-11e8-bacb-cde689e4aef6