The simplicity of the idea behind Sharpay may seem simple, just like its promotional ICO video. And indeed it is, but that's the point. A staggering 97% of websites have been found to not have any form of sharing buttons for users to promote their content on social media. Sharpay aims to place sharing buttons on these sites. That pretty much sums up most of Sharpay. There's no mumbo jumbo deep technical innovation here, but a vision that if pulled off, could be groundbreaking for the Internet.
Why Sharpay Is Interesting
Sharpay will change how sharing works by using a decentralized system (based on a version of the BitShares blockchain) to allow users to share website content with a simple sharing button (the "Sharpay" button). When users share content with the Sharpay button, they are not only using a single centralized site like Facebook or Twitter, both of which can get into the habit of censoring content and banning accounts, but rather share the content directly among all connected social media networks and other Sharpay users themselves through the blockchain. The greatest thing of all though, and something which currently doesn't exist with any sharing button, is that when users share content with Sharpay, they are directly rewarded for doing so in the form of tokens.
Sharpay's target market consists of both existing, established websites that have a high social media presence, and websites with no social media presence at all. It's pretty obvious what Sharpay can do for sites with no social media presence (hint: provide a way to share their content), but what can Sharpay offer sites that already have a lot of sharing buttons? Quite a lot actually. You see, if Sharpay's vision takes off, traditional sharing buttons may start becoming much less relevant. After all, who wants to use sharing buttons that don't offer any rewards for sharing?
If you find Sharpay to be too simple for your liking (it's mostly just a sharing button after all, right?), then you might be missing the point. There's a reason 97% of websites don't have a social media presence or any sharing buttons: it's just too difficult to set up social media accounts, link them on a website, and maintain them with sharing buttons. Sharpay is a one-stop solution that actually encourages readers to share content. A site administrator just adds the Sharpay button to their site, connects their social media profiles, and it's done.
Most websites are under-represented on social media, with no presence at all. Existing sharing buttons fail to offer any incentive for users to share content.
Users Are Incentivized To Share With Sharpay
As shown in the above infographic, AddThis and ShareThis are the two largest forms of social media engagement plugins run by websites. Yet even with these plugins, users aren't sharing content all that much compared to the number of users that use social media platforms. And why would they? They don't get anything for it, and it may be viewed as "spammy" by their friends, potentially tarnishing their reputation. Now with Sharpay, everyone has a reason to share, since they receive tokens for doing so. This is great for websites, as now their followers will be actually sharing their content far more often, given the website more exposure; and great for the readers who share the content, as they are now rewarded for doing so in the form of Sharpay tokens.
The Sharpay button, as previously mentioned, will integrate all major social media networks directly, in addition to the Sharpay blockchain. The button is simple and straightforward too, just like Sharpay's vision.
An example of the Sharpay share button
The vision of Sharpay can be summed up in their motto - "You share — we pay. Sharing is the new mining. Get your Sharpay!". Kind of catchy isn't it? More technical details of how the sharing rewards will all work are available in the whitepaper.
Roadmap
Token & ICO Details
A total of 4 billion Sharpay tokens will ever exist, of which just over 31% will serve as a reserve to reward users. 37.5% will be available in the ICO. What I like most about this ICO is the pre-sale investment is limited to just 0.1% of supply. The token price at ICO is aimed to be about 0.01 cent each, which at the time of the publication of the whitepaper is about 0.00003 ETH per token. The main token sale will run from March 1 until May 31.
The soft cap for the ICO is set at $3,000,000.
Another good thing to note is that Sharpay will spend 90% of its revenue to buy-back Sharpay tokens from users, on a quarterly basis. This will all be handled via Smart Contracts to prevent rigging of the system.
