Appics Post-ICO Thoughts
For those of you that are as excited as I am about a prospective Facebook replacement the Appics ICO, which completed on April 25th, was able to raise $4,202,372 even during a bear market. Since then, the team has been hard at work spreading news of the upcoming alpha launch and I'm quite excited about the future of this platform! Check out this video reviewing the completion of the ICO and current initiatives:
What is Appics?
If you're unfamiliar with the project, Appics is built on the same STEEM blockchain that steemit is built upon. It has a similar structure where you can vest tokens into the application to gain voting power which is then used for curation. There are a few differences between steemit and Appics though. For example, Appics is intended to be a more social and user friendly interface. Where on steemit you expect comprehensive and well articulated article-level content to be posted occasionally, Appics is a bit more flexible. If a user wants to just post a picture they took, it would make more sense to do so on Appics. If you want to send a quick update instead of a massive and comprehensive post, you can do so on Appics. Think of how a user on Facebook might post compared to something like Medium. On Medium you expect full articles, much like when using steemit. On Facebook you expect a more concise thought shared, maybe a simple paragraph or two. You might post a reaction to a current event that fosters several back and forth comments and replies and interactions with many followers. This is what Appics will be able to do.
Here's a video from the team highlighting the platform:
steemit is great, but people are longing for a home for more social and light-weighted content. People like the idea of posting their opinion on something and then engaging in the responses, but they don't in all cases want a full 1000+ word article with multiple sources cited, sometimes they just want to start a conversation about it. It makes sense for another platform such as Appics to compliment the current steemit platform. Someone trying to build up an online presence and gain a following can utilize the two differently and that's extremely valuable.
Another difference between the Appics platform and steemit is that part of the curation rewards get kicked back into the ecosystem. The distribution is as follows:
"65% goes to the content creator, 25% to the voters/curators and the remaining 10% will go towards sustaining the network of a social-influencer based economy and scaling of the platform."
They also will have a tiny fee (cited as less than $0.01) for each transaction that gets kicked back into the ecosystem. You may at first think that it's bad sign that money is flowing back to the platform. However, if we want the platform to be able to be competitive in the market that Facebook currently dominates, they'll need to have resources to spend on development and marketing among other things to make that possible. A social network platform needs constant care and attention to optimize for its users, that costs money. It makes sense to have a structure like this if for future growth of the platform.
I missed the ICO, what should I do?
If you missed out on the ICO, don't worry! You can still be involved early on in the adoption of this platform. Their roadmap lists a full roll-out of an application with the integrated XAP currency to happen somewhere in Q3-Q4 of this year! With new platforms like this, it helps to be an early bird. If you want to make sure you're on top of new developments and updates there's a few places you can go.
- Subscribe on their website. (Just scroll to the bottom and enter your email to sign up)
- Join the Telegram group
- Follow on Twitter
- Like on Facebook
Another recommendation, if you want a solid, user-incentive based alternative to Facebook to thrive, check out their website and their whitepaper to educate yourself on the platform to the point that your comfortable sharing information with people you enjoy interacting with on other platforms.
What are your thoughts?
I look forward to using the Appics platform when it releases, I'm also curious to hear what thoughts my fellow steemians might have on the platform. Do you see it like I do, as a great complimentary product? Do you agree with my assessment that having rewards kicked back to the platform is a good thing for longevity? Are any of you planning on participating in the Appics platform? I'd love to know which of my followers will also be on Appics (or anybody else with similar interests!)