It's been about 10 weeks since I both joined Noise.cash and Torum at around the same time. I've did first impression articles on both, calling the former Crypto Twitter and the latter Crypto Facebook. I considered both to be worth my time, but I was strongly favoring Torum at that point. Noise.cash really was just that - a lot of loud noises and the opportunity to earn some free BCH on top of it. I even stated in my first article, that I'm most likely just going to use it for a while until they run out of free tips and just move one.
10 weeks later, I'm still heavily using Noise.cash every day, while I just noticed that I didn't even log in to Torum for over a week now. What did go wrong there and how did that happen? Let's find out together!
Surprisingly, it's not really that something went wrong for Torum. It's more that so many things went right for Noise.cash. As the title of this article suggests, simplicity is king and there aren't many things more simple in crypto than Noise.cash. Initially, I considered their front end to be an early alpha build, lacking even the most basic quality of life features. Over time, they added a lot of useful features and functions to the site, but the basic layout itself remained basically unchanged.
To make a post you just type in what ever you have to say, add an image (optional), and choose a chamber (optional as well). The whole thing is as straight forward as it gets. Checking my feed, going through tips and replies I've gotten, it all just takes mere seconds. Interestingly enough, I usually only spend a minute or two on the site per visit. I just go through the replies I've gotten, give some tips, make some noise, and off I go again. The truth is, by now I'm not missing any quality of life features, the site is just super functional the way it is built.
Again, that's not to say that Torum has a bad design per se. Quite the contrary, I quite like the way they crafted their site, it has a clean, aesthetically pleasing look to me. The issue lies with the time it takes to get things done. There are different ways to share your content. You can make posts or start threads. There's gamification in the form of missions, and a lot more. The time it takes me to get anything meaningful done would suffice to go through my whole routine on Noise.cash.
This is true for the big picture but only in many minor things. When I get a reply on Noise, a click on the alert will take me directly to that reply. On Torum, it will display the whole thread with all replies, so it's up to me to figure out which replies I already read and which one is the new reply. I don't consider this to be bad design in general, they just try to give you all the information available contrary to Noise.cash, which seems to try and only display exactly what you have asked for and nothing more.
To me, the most glaring difference is that Noise.cash seems to perfectly understand what it wants to be. It's a micro blogging platform and it's only use is to deliver said micro content to its users. There's no gamification, no complexity, everything on the site serves this singular purpose. Torum on the other hand tries to be a bit of everything. There's micro blogging, but there's also clans which you have to join in order to contribute to them, there's a messaging system for private messages. You can create threads which basically are just longer posts made in a clan. You have the missions complete with rewards that you need to claim, you have companies to follow and so much more. At first glance, that's cool and everything, but in effect, it just makes interaction with the site unnecessary complex. When exactly am I meant to go and use Torum instead of any of the other options available to me?
If I want to read or write full articles (threads on Torum), I will always go to Hive and LeoFinance for that. If I want to talk directly with others (direct messaging on Torum), I will most likely use Discord. If I want my share of micro blogging content (Posts on Torum) I will go to Noise.cash. The idea of having all these features under one roof seems intriguing at first, but the truth is, there are more dedicated services that are a lot better at what they are trying to do.
That's really not to say that Torum is bad in general. I still like it and I very well might use it again eventually. The question is more whether the "everything under one roof"-model has any real future. There's a reason Facebook is declining while other, more focused social media platforms are thriving. Ultimately, I feel like it's way better to really focus on your core features and provide the best service you possibly can without trying to be something you are not. In the end, that's why I constantly use Noise.cash while I almost completely ignore Torum by now.
On top of that, that's also the reason I feel LeoFinance is doing things perfectly right. LeoFinance will always remain a site for (financial) blogging, a service where you go if you want to read or write proper articles. With Project Blank, we'll see another service added to the family. But instead of trying to somehow add the whole thing to the LeoFinance interface, it's moved to a separate interface that completely focuses on providing micro-blogging content. Behind the scenes, these services are all connected with each other, sharing the same ecosystem. But on the user-side, they are completely separated projects, each highly focused on what they want to be and the service they want to provide. With time, more projects, each with its own unique purpose, can (and probably will) be added to the system, providing one complex ecosystem, but keeping it just as simple as noise.cash on an individual level. There are fun times ahead of us!
And that's all from me for today, thank you all for reading and see you next time!