In case you missed it yesterday, EOS announced their new social media platform.
Yes, you likely have heard this was coming at some point over the last 12 months as Dan Larimer, as well as many of his followers, have been saying how they were going to create "steemit 2.0".
Was this steemit 2.0?
Well that depends on what your definition of steemit 2.0 actually is.
This appears to be quite different than steemit.com in my opinion for several reasons that I will go over below.
Some tidbits on the announced Voice...
When it was first leaked by Bloomberg, it was said to be a Twitter competitor. Meaning short-form blogging.
However, as more details emerged it sounds like the hope is for it to be a home for all forms of blogging, image hosting, and video hosting.
That somewhat sounds like what steemit.com was hoping to be as well.
However, how it goes about it sounds like it will be very different.
This was the quote from Dan about how and why the site will appeal to people:
"On Voice, you don’t need to have a million followers to have your voice heard. You can use your VOICE tokens instead”
(Source: https://www.eoswriter.io/3544_the-social-media-platform-where-everyone-has-a-voice.eos)
Interesting concept.
Some actual footage from the keynote...
Continuing on how this will work and why it will be different than steemit.com, this was Brendan Blumer's comments on social media and Voice:
It sounds like the plan will be to use multiple verification procedures to try and ensure that every account is indeed a human and that people only own one account.
Whether they can actually succeed in doing this is highly unlikely, but even if they get close that would be impressive and probably needed to make this even remotely successful.
According to Dan, the result of these measures they are taking will be this...
"the VOICE token has the fairest token distribution in the world”.
(Source: https://www.eoswriter.io/3544_the-social-media-platform-where-everyone-has-a-voice.eos)
Ok, so besides that how is it different than steemit?
Well, besides the fact they are trying to limit it to one person one account. It doesn't sound like it will be stake weighted voting.
It also sounds like they will get rid of the distribution problem by not allowing a pre-mine, or purchase of the coins. They can only be obtained through social activity.
It sounds like you will be able to use the token to increase the visibility of your content, or use it to allow others to find the content you found valuable.
It also didn't say downvoting will play a major role.
Further, they said they will be using the advertising dollars generated on the site to back the token and give it real fundamental value.
That last part is especially interesting to me and something I would like steemit,inc and the steem team to look into to see if that is something we could do over here.
Overall, it sounds like this platform will not be very similar to steemit.com, but the jury is out on whether it will be that much better or not.
One thing is very likely though, they will be spending the money needed to at least give it a chance to on board millions of users.
Still hoping steemit,inc has something like that in the cards for steemit and steem when the time is right.
Stay informed my friends.
-Doc