A lot has happened on Touch.Tube since my last update here. October was a very busy month of streamlining operations and rolling out major new features to the site. Let’s see what the team accomplished this month.
Fixes and Updates
Signups snag fixed: An annoying issue with Google Recaptcha has been fixed. It was throwing an error page during one of the final steps to signing up.
Video Content
Video uploads keep ramping up. The website is achieving more uploads and faster transcoding times. There are still the occasional hiccups in the system where it gets a big backlog of videos waiting in the transcoding queue, but these queues are clearing much quicker. And the team appears to be able to ramp capacity as needed in a much more efficient manner.
Recently, the team made a couple of nice updates to the individual video pages. One great update was they added the video description directly under the video and title on the video page. Before this update the description field on the video posting page was only published to the blockchain. Now it is being displayed on the user interface so visitors can get more information about the scene they are about to watch. Content uploaders have mostly been doing a good job providing detailed, accurate info in the description such as the performers and action of the scene.
Another nice update to the video page has been linking a commenter's username to their account page. This makes it much easier for other users to quickly visit a commenter's profile page and see what they are all about and follow the account if they so desire.
Vote Hard and Fast:
During the month the dev team made two big improvements to the voting feature of the website. Before these updates you could only like videos or comments. The first feature update enabled users to vote for videos or comments. Specifically it enabled the ability to up-vote or down-vote videos and comments. The second feature update worked hand in hand with the first. The second voting update allowed users to up or down vote by a set percentage between 1% and 100%.
On the up-vote side of things, this has allowed users to spread their VIT love around a little more by up voting good videos or good comments with less than 100% up-votes to have more votes at their disposal to reward more good (but not great) content without depleting their voting strength rapidly. This also allows their 100% up votes to shine through on what they consider truly great content.
On the down-vote side of things, it has allowed users to down vote suspected pirated content or annoying automated, repetitive, bland commentary without burning up too much of their vote strength. In this way multiple community members can down-vote bad content together and bury it without using up too much of any one individual’s vote strength.
Can I Get A Witness??
One of the biggest updates of the month, and one of the most recent, has been the roll out of witness voting to the website user interface. Before this update you could only vote for witnesses via CLI wallet. Voting for witness is now very easy. All you need to do is login to your Touch.Tube account and then visit the witnesses page. Once there, click the vote button next to the witness you would like to vote for. You will need to confirm votes by entering your Touch.Tube password. You can vote for a maximum of 30 witnesses.
Before you vote, please take some time to view each witness’s Witness URL (listed under their username on the witness page) and their activity on the VIT Chain Explorer. Are the witnesses active on the site? Are they commenting or uploading? Are they voting on other user’s videos and comments or do they only vote on their own videos/comments?
A final note on Witness Voting. It is open ended. You don’t have to make your votes now. You can wait and learn about the system and current witnesses. You can vote for some now, others later. You can also withdraw your votes at any time from one, some, or all witnesses. Lastly, you can also start your own witness server and become a VIT Witness yourself. Join the VIT Witness Discord for more info and assistance.
Whats next…
The following update information was provided in the official Vice Industry Token Telegram Chat Group on Friday.
Token Swap: ERC-20 VIT to Native VIT
Development is complete. Final test transactions are being done now with production deployment planned very soon. The development team has indicated that there will be a few limits placed on the token swap mechanism at the start to ensure everything is running smoothly and is behaving as expected.
Touchit.Social Site
The much anticipated VIT powered social site is nearing completion and word is that it will be ready and rolled out shortly after the token swap mechanism is deployed and running smoothly at full capacity.
Tube8 Integration
Tube8 integration with the VIT blockchain is still in progress. No time frame for production release as of yet. I’ll post an update here once I hear anything.
That's a wrap!
The Vice Industry Token development team has gotten a lot of work done in October and we are only a couple of big updates away from having all the foundational building blocks of the VIT ecosystem in place. Once Touchit.Social is launched, Tube8 is integrated, and users can power-up / power-down their VIT then I expect a new rapid growth phase in the VIT user base. I’ll plan on keeping you posted as these big updates are rolled out.
In the meantime, if you haven’t signed up what are you waiting for? You can sign up quickly and easily at the Touch.Tube signup page. If you need further assistance or have questions about the system, check in on the Telegram chat. There are lots of helpful users in the chat that are ready to answer your questions.
What do you think of Touch Tube so far? Are you happy with the pace of development? Are there any fixes, updates, or new features I neglected to mention? Let me know in the comments.