When in 2017 Steemit announced their plans for Smart Media Tokens the first SMT announcement came from Appics. The German team based in Hamburg had by then already worked in the background for about a year to create their vision of a modern mobile app with Steem-like payments. Supported by 
Read their white paper for more detailed information about the app and its technology based on the Steem Smart Media Tokens.
Appics Official Video
Earn Appics Before The ICO
The Pre-ICO of Appics was sold out in under 30 minutes and the regular ICO is coming up in Q1 2018. The token sale price will start at $ 0.1304 and will go up during the even rounds to $ 0.15.
With the creation of the Appics token a part of the pool is distributed to the bounty system contributors. You can both help the Appics team and earn their new tokens by using their bounty system and spread the word about them on various soical media platforms - including Steemit.
Auto-Bounties
By connecting your accounts you can automatically get stakes for the distributed pool share. Supported for auto-stakes are Twitter, Facebook and Steemit although I haven't been able to connect my Steem account yet (despite the fact that I did send a transaction with the provided memo key). And Facebook didn't attribute my shares there yet. If you have more infos please let me know below.
Manual Bounties
Further there are special bounties for all kinds of different social media platforms which need to be manually moderated but will bring high rewards. If you have a Youtube account with many followers for example you can submit your videos there.
The Referral Program
With the referral link provided by Appics you can earn shares for investments during the official ICO which is another really nice way to stack up some of their promising tokens. The links in this visibility post of mine are the formentioned referral link of mine. You will only earn tokens that way if the referred person will purchase at least 1000 XAP (Appics tokens) during the ICO.
This is how my referral link looks like:
https://ico.appics.com/login?referral=rG7yVZc3
My Own Thoughts
Mobile is the future and I like the idea of being an early adopter of new SMT platforms both as an investor as well as a contributor. Appics looks like a solid project with prominent support and big money investment. They sold their Pre-ICO in an instant and it looks like there will be tons of support for it. I am saving my earnings already to have the money available when the Appics ICO begins.
I embrace the idea of having many different approaches to content and Appics is certainly claiming an interesting niche with mobile photo, video and life-streaming. Particularly in poorer countries where mobile access is often the only way to go online this might become a huge hit because it will probably be easier than posting on Steemit. But also for creators like myself this is a fantastic way to make a living in the Steem ecosystem with maximum of mobility.
