There was a surprise appearance at the London Cryptocurrency Show last weekend where 
I spent some time talking to 
Until now I have only had general knowledge of the proposal. I saw their presentation at Steemfest2 and at the time the impression I had was that they were being very ambitious and were juggling too many balls for the first version of the app. It looked great, as you would expect from a world class digital marketing company, but it still seemed very early days at that stage. Plans have evolved since then and the current proposal is very exciting indeed.
What is Appics?
This app will be a social app borrowing aspects of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even online shopping but adding in features that are for the first time possible thanks to Blockchain.
The app "merges lifestyle with generated income " distributing value (XAP tokens) to content creators and curators with the distribution being determined by users and decentralised "Influencers" rather than centralised corporations.
Features
The features were never clear to me before this weekend but after meeting the team and going back over the whitepaper, there are two core features in the initial version.
Feeds & Categories
Browsing content will be based on 16 categories initially. Unlike tags on other platforms content will be tagged by Influencers. Visibility of content will be determined by these "Influencers" as well as voting. Influencers will be experts who initially will be chosen by Appics but over time will be chosen by the community.
- This is in contrast to how mainstream platforms manipulate feeds to deliver content with the aim of maximising advertising revenue as opposed to delivering content the user wants to see.
- If you are a Steemit veteran you will know how hard it is to find relevant content. Categories will enhance the experience for Appics users.
Online Businesses
Building an online brand is a mammoth and expensive task at the moment. Developing networks, audience, driving traffic, establishing trust, marketing, even just getting payments. The integrated marketplace will allow Appics users to get started developing online businesses from a level playing field in a way that leverage's all of the networks and connections that they have built on the platform.
Charity Partners...
Charities
Every corporation I can think of loves to support charities. It makes them feel good about themselves, sleep easier at night. I did not get that impression from Appics. There seems to be a genuine cause here built on the premise of empowering users and sharing the value created with them. It really feels like a proper Blockchain based ideal.
The Appics white paper even goes into detail on using the platform for increasing transparency for Charitable organisations. This is notable because it illustrates the motivation of the organisation behind the platform.
Curation and Influencers
If you have used Steem(it) you will know how curation on a blockchain can be rewarded. Appics have a similar mechanism on their platform and will be rewarding the engine of the network (the users) with some variations of Steem based on SMT tokens.
- Influencers will be like whales, their influence will be magnified. These Influencers will change over time as the platform grows, the number of Influencers will also grow. In effect the algorithm for finding content will improve and become ever more detailed. You could envisage influencers for individual countries in each category over time.
- curators will also have a say and get rewarded for finding content.
Tokens
The token for the ICO is an ERC20 token which will be coverted to XAP tokens which will be SMTs on the Steem Blockchain.
APP PICS
What a great name, I can't believe no one had come up with this already!
Appics is due to launch in late 2018.
Check out Appics today and let me know what you think.
Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Travel.