Steem Forums App // "TokenBB" // Open registrations
There have been plenty of folks mentioning that they would love to have a forum service built on-chain, and apparently that will soon be a reality. Out of all the, lets call them, "old-school" social media platform types, forums are probably the most resilient and cover a very specific niche essential for communities.
I saw this announcement today on @cryptodrive blog and they started registrations. You can log in and test out the platform a bit, leave some feedback, catch a few bugs, etc.
TokenBB uses a nested comment section (like what Musing.io does) for the threads.
The forum is still at a very early phase so it has a very basic look and not all functions are implemented.
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They are mentioning adding beneficiary fees to the platform that will be split between the thread creator and the app which is pretty interesting. Essentially, you will get a cut of all upvotes happening in your thread. (if i understood it correctly.)
Even though this might be a somewhat unique use of beneficiary fees, i still would not call myself a fan, since i believe beneficiary fees are more often then not app killers. Many apps that rely solely on beneficiary fees to stay afloat neither capture the user base, nor are they sustainable. Mostly due to Steemit/Busy having 0% fees.
Then theres the @blocktrades worker proposal system incoming that could potentially reduce author payouts. Combine that with beneficiary fees and you have turned off a lot of people.
I think there are many better ways to monetize your platform that wont turn off users (like digital asset creation), which i did suggest in a thread on the TokenBB forums.
Another thing im only lukewarm on is the name. Its just "TokenBB".... The name doesnt say much about this having much to do with social media or forums. It is actually quite difficult to create a title for this post that will convey what TokenBB is.
All in all, this is an amazing addition to the Steem blockchain, there is really no doubt about it. If they succeed at picking a good monetization model im sure this will be a big win for everyone.
With any project the big questions are: What does this solve? Does it improve anything?
The answer is i think pretty obvious.
Keep on Steeming and ill see you around.
This makes sense to me when it comes to alternative frontends or apps through which people may post unique content. I don't get why it would deter someone from leaving a helpful comment on a forum, however, given that the busy/steemit alternative would not get seen by anybody.
If I spent 5-10 hours making a piece of content, having a 10-20% cut taken matters to me. If I am to make a helpful comment that takes me a minute to write, and there is no alternative place to write it where it will get seen by the same people browsing the website, then what do I have to lose?
In the first case, there is an alternative cost to using the App/Frontend. In the second case such as @tokenbb, there's only the potential to make a gain. So why not?
The main challenge for this business model is rather to give others reason to want to curate comments written on the forum instead of allocating their voting power towards something more profitable. If comments are not curated, then there are no benefactor rewards. So again, I don't think the problem has anything to do with the author taking a cut.
Yeah you may be right with that assessment. The thing is the perception while using the app that matters. The forums will use a nested comment section from the perspective of Steemit users but from the thread creator perspective in-app, creating a thread would appear as creating a Steemit post.
I can see your point and you might even be right, but i still think that more imaginative ways of monetization can be found.
I agree with you generally. Giving people the ability to use Steem to curate and be curated is in my eyes primarily a great way to give people a reason to spend time on your website app or to begin with. Then businesses can use more conventional methods to monetize the attention/time-on site that users are willing to spend there (ads, premium features, affiliates, etc).
Great post @lordbutterfly, thanks for evaluating our project. The name TokenBB is made up of the words "Token" and "Bulletin Board" abbreviated. Bulletin Boards are a synonym for forums, and we plan to Tokenise the forums in future with SMT's/Steem-engine tokens where forum owners can issue tokens to their users via Proof-of-Brain (PoB) ie. upvoted content will earn forum tokens as well as Steem rewards.
Regarding the beneficiary share, I wish to correct that forum owners will get a beneficiary share, not topic/thread creators, although you may have just given us a good idea.
We will also have premium services where forum owners can pay a monthly fee to disable or alter the beneficiary rewards, but for free forums such rewards will remain to cover server costs.
Thx for the response.
To be honest, im not completely against anything i wrote with mild criticism about. Just merely offering an alternative view so something productive might come from it.
I have some vested BT tokens so its in my interest that Buildteam does well.
I must thank you, the share for thread creators is genius and will improve forum activity and niche topic curation by topic creator, we have added it to our tiered pricing model.
Really awesome that you support and hold BUILDTEAM tokens! With people like you active in our community, I have no doubt we will do well.
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