Lessons learned from Social Mining FerrumNetwork

Two months ago I started my FerrumNetwork Social Mining journey. To be quite frank I have not been that active in the platform for the past few weeks due to time constraints and my discontent on how downvotes are thrown around in their system. Social mining works similarly to STEEM-based social media networks. Social miners are incentivized to create content (to create awareness of the various projects in its platform) as well as in validating these contributions through upvotes.


	*Lesson no.1: Social Mining is very similar to Steem-based social network with different rewards structure and social activities*

Like steemit, the rewards a participant receives is relative to the number of upvotes and downvotes it gets. Moreover, these upvotes and downvotes carry weight depending on the current influence of the validator (the one that upvotes and downvotes), which we can liken to STEEM power in Steemit. The more upvotes the content gets and the higher the influence of the upvoter, the more rewards the content creator receives. The same is also true when contents get downvoted.


*Lesson no.2: Social Mining influence that determines voting weight is tied to the amount of FRM you hold in your ERC20 wallet*

Content contributions are not limited to the platform itself. They can be posted or created in another platform such as Medium, Steemit, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Telegram and others. In fact Telegram, Twitter and Reddit have all been integrated into the Social Mining platform to automatically post contributions on its Community Board. This is where most of the validations of contribution take place and where participants can communicate and interact with each other.


	*Lesson no.3: Social Mining contributions are not confined in the platform itself. Contributions can originate from various social media outlets.*

One can liken the Social Mining platform of Dao Maker, to a pluggable version of the STEEM-based social media network. The Ferrum Network is not the only organization that is using the platform. There are many highly respectable initiatives that are currently using it, such as Elrond Network, LTO Network, 2KEY, and Harmony. These projects have their own social mining sites with different tasks to be performed and different rewards structure. More importantly, participants are rewarded with their protocol tokens of the project.


*Lesson no.4: Dao Maker's Social Mining platform supports multiple blockchain-based initiatives and offers a common framework for them to use for marketing activities*

I for one is participating in the Social mining FerrumNetwork, a new Fintech company that is leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT) with a strong focus on cross-chain Interoperability. My first major contribution was a steemit blog-post that serves as both an invitation for readers to participate in social mining activities of Ferrum as well as to get to know more about Ferrum Network and Social mining itself. It was well-received by the community and became one of the most top contributions of the social mining cycle.


	*Lesson no.5: The Social Mining community appreciates effort and quality of work.*

I was elated because all the hard work I put into writing the article paid off. More importantly, many of the people in the community appreciated my work which gave me confidence and inspiration to do better and participate more. However, this celebratory mood was quickly quelled by big downvotes to my other activities. To make matters worse I saw other content creators being penalized with downvotes even though they submitted valuable and awesome content. This made me re-evaluate my intention of being more active in the platform.


*Lesson no.6: The Social Mining community sometimes downvotes contributions for various reasons, getting too much reward is a valid reason to get downvoted.*

To understand this I tried looking into why people downvote. While there were many legitimate downvotes, I found that some great contents were downvoted anonymously without giving any valid reason. This led me to believe that some whales in the platform are either power-tripping or just do not understand what they are doing. Nonetheless, it is nice to know that the developers of the Social Mining platform are well aware of this issue and currently formulating ways to limit such destructive behavior.


	*Lesson no.7: The Social Mining platform is still a work in progress. There are some kinks in the platform that are currently being worked on.*

The problem stems from the fact that downvoters are anonymous and are not required to give a justification for their downvote. To be fair with Social Mining developers they do require some sort of reason to be indicated when downvoting. They offer a dropdown menu where downvoters can choose their reason. However, one reason seems to be problematic. Participants can get downvotes just by acquiring too many upvotes.


*Lesson no.8: In Social Mining platform downvotes are not rewarded but it is an important part of policing the platform from all forms of bad behavior and abuse*

While one can argue that downvotes may have some detrimental effects on the platform we must not forget that this mechanism exists for a reason and helps the platform attract the right type of support. It also serves as a countermeasure for abusive and bad behavior. Besides, if you are more than willing to take the rewards given freely through the upvotes then you must also accept the risk of getting downvotes which more often than not are acts of tough love.


	*Lesson no.9: The current downvote mechanics in Social Mining is far from perfect but should be taken as some form of tough love, that will enable participants to bring out the best of themselves.*

By a stroke of luck, my decision to dial down my participation in creating content led me to the discovery that you can also earn as much just by doing the other activities in the Social Mining platform. The simple but informative, relevant and timely tweet is highly valued. Validating good content can also be a lucrative endeavor. In fact, to my surprise, despite slowing down in content creation I have doubled my Ferrum holdings!


*Lesson no.10: Social Mining is not a walk in the park. If you want to get rewards you must be willing to do time and work.*

Overall, like any other endeavor, those who want to participate and get rewarded must be willing to spend their time, effort and give their best for valuable contributions. Beginners might feel confused and lost at times but always remember that there is always a helping hand in the community. Just try to reach out and the community members will try their best to help you with your concerns. One of which is gifrancav one of the top contributors in social mining platform.

For a comprehensive write up about FerrumNetwork social mining you might want to read my previous post here here.