So, I've been playing with Friendtech for the last few hours. When starting with a new social media platform you assume it will take some time to figure out. With Friendtech that was not the case.
Its so straight forward and easy to use (Something all Hive frontends lack) that you could almost describe it as lacking depth.
So what is it actually?
Friendtech is a platform where you trade tokenized paywalls of personal chatrooms.
That is the best way to describe it in my opinion. You connect your Twitter account with one click, friendtech registers you as a user and from there you buy keys from other users (or they buy yours) that allows you to get into their chatrooms. The more keys are bought from a certain person, the more expensive the keys get.
A 5% trading fee is given for every trade to the chatroom owner.
And that is literally it. Oftentimes, or most times there is nothing really to it besides speculating based on how popular some random CT influencer is.
PROS:
- Lets users profit from a subscription type service alongside the creator.
- Easy to use and understand
- A very good attempt to tokenize an individuals "social capital".
CONS:
- It would be served best as a feature, like on one of Hive frontends for example.
- It offers nothing in terms of fixing the actual problems facing social media.
- Its mostly dominated by the regular Crypto Twitter douchebag cartel.
- If you leave, you are basically ruging your key holders. The Rug is programmed in.
- No community building features.
I honestly like this idea of users and supporters actually benefiting from a creators paywall alongside them. Its quite an interesting concept but its a concept that on its own doesnt have enough merit. You are still primarily a Twitter creator. You dont actually create anything on Friendtech.
Will you pay 10 ETH to be in someones chatroom? As a creator will you just create for these 100 people specifically? After about 200 key holders the keys get progressively expensive.
And then theres the "programmed in rug" where if you actually leave Friendtech you are essentially rugging everyone holding your keys. The value of the keys/tokens always came from you being there. So they become worthless. You cannot quit, you cannot leave, you cannot stop...
Remember that one song?
"Relax," said the night man
"We are programmed to receive
You can check-out any time you like
But you can never leave!"
Friendtech is the Hotel California of crypto social media.
But is it here to stay?
Never easy to answer that question.
As a concept I would say it has enough merit to remain, but Friendtech as a social media platform has very little community building features.
If anything, key holders and chatrooms actively compete with each other and have no touching point otherwise.
While on Hive if one succeeds all succeed and wer all on one big interconnected web of frontends, on Friendtech youre isolated and youre basically encouraged to sell to the greater fool. The last guy in gets screwed. And these keys are just too expensive.
I would assume features will be added over time to Friendtech because in this state, Friendtech has about 0 chance to survive. But I find the concept solid and I would not be surprised to see more and better ways to implement this system elsewhere.
And here, buy my key. 😅
https://www.friend.tech/rooms/0xee68c6add9d88b53f430a1e0ef1240b296928de0