Hard Questions for Bytemaster

[Method-X]

My Skype has been going off the hook with people asking if this post was me. It's not me... whatever that's worth.

That said, legitimate questions were raised. The only thing I disagree with is Adams value. I've looked into him and I think he would be a WICKED addition to our marketing effort if he were allowed to participate in an official manner.

[donkeypong]

I think it is not fair of us to be bashing Brian, Adam, etc, when they havent been allowed to unleash their main marketing campaign yet because the development is not yet to version 1.0. 
We need to give them a chance to show us all what they have done, once 1.0 comes out.  THEN if nothing happens, you can criticize them.  (And if the marketing campaign works well, you should praise them).

This. Maybe we need to distinguish "pre- st. martin" vs "post st.martin" marketing efforts. The game completely changed but there were no changes visible to the public.

Yes. Well said. Have a little patience, people. We will see results soon.

[toast]

I think it is not fair of us to be bashing Brian, Adam, etc, when they havent been allowed to unleash their main marketing campaign yet because the development is not yet to version 1.0. 
We need to give them a chance to show us all what they have done, once 1.0 comes out.  THEN if nothing happens, you can criticize them.  (And if the marketing campaign works well, you should praise them).

This. Maybe we need to distinguish "pre- st. martin" vs "post st.martin" marketing efforts. The game completely changed but there were no changes visible to the public.

[toast]

Freezing funds is a slippery slope.

Frustration with marketing is nothing new, but things have only been improving. Adam is legit and CAVO is a huge opportunity, Brian's crew is legit but cannot execute until we give them the go-ahead with a nice wallet and protocol v1.

I get that part. I personally only ask BM (and if possible you) to be 100% sure that:
1.There are very serious (per his/your judgment) plans, (as well as the  details of said plans), ready to go!
2. The only thing on the way of the start of the campaign is the lack of nice wallet and protocol v1, as of yet.

I only know sparse details for #1, but brian's crew has a very good track record (max wright by himself is easily worth the entire marketing budget up until now).
For #2 I think the other constraint is finalizing deals with on/off ramps.

[merlin0113]

I think it's time for doing things  in a milestone manner. Start with the official documentation, perhaps? Oh right, who is fitted under this JD? Officially i mean?

[Ander]

I think it is not fair of us to be bashing Brian, Adam, etc, when they havent been allowed to unleash their main marketing campaign yet because the development is not yet to version 1.0. 
We need to give them a chance to show us all what they have done, once 1.0 comes out.  THEN if nothing happens, you can criticize them.  (And if the marketing campaign works well, you should praise them).

[Empirical1.1]

That's a bit of a 20%+ day buzzkill. OP is not me.

I concur on the fact that Brian's & as a result Western marketing has been fairly underwhelming on the actual marketing front to date. I'm hoping the marketing push will be their chance to shine, it's pretty hush, hush so I don't know.

I honestly don't know much about measuring marketing metrics. From what I've seen so far,  I personally expect our Western marketing success will be driven more by the community marketing team. If I was in their shoes I'd be frustrated  if the main team were hitting paydirt for marketing results, that could be measured and were shown to be more the result of  the community team and their initiatives. So I'm in favour of greater disclosure there and perhaps putting some of the incentives up for grabs to whoever produces actual results.

Looking at BM's response below that's a no go. I guess the best thing we can do, is reward those who produce measurable marketing results on the blockchain.

Follow My Vote is a group of people not just Adam.   They are part of a larger strategic partnership that I hope will pay huge dividends for BTS in Q1 2015.  Adam and his team is helping provide a different kind of marketing effort than Brian and his team or Methodx and his team.   

Why did follow my vote get such a large stake?  Because I have faith in what Adam can do.   Things Adam & Team are working on for BTS.

1) Scratch-Off BitUSD cards of various denominations for promotional purposes and to be a physical manifestation of  BitUSD
2) Merchandising / Online Store for BitShares products
3) Attracting users and publicity to BitShares from the voting, democracy, transparent government crowd. 

Nathan is only working for Adam through the demo we are doing for CA voting officials and the work he is doing will double as infrastructure for BitShares KYC.

There are a lot of moving parts going on all at the same time.  I am not an internet marketer but Adam is.  Adam has management experience and is already helping to recruit free marketing interns and developer talent.    Adam is working very hard for BTS and was a tough negotiator (But so was I).   

Adams long-term compensation is based upon the metric of the number of users he signs up.  Brian's is based upon our market cap relative to Bitcoin.  The funds allocated to Brian are being divided among 4 high powered marketers with amazing connections.   

So what we have here is transparency from me on who I hired, but less transparency from Brian, Adam, and Bo on what they have done with the funds I trusted them with.   That said the Chinese marketing has been far more effective to date.  Brian's team is switching gears in the short term but will start seeing results this month.     

Things are moving forward and when all of these forces start firing a full force it will be quite amazing.


   

  Interesting. Obviously you'll use them in general promotion but  I was just thinking along the lines of something like 'Make it a BitShares Christmas' & was wondering the best way to share/gift BitAssets. (I've long thought that some of the best people to spread & gift BitAssets were our 1000+ strong community, out of our own pockets, to family, friends &  acquaintances, we think they'd appeal most too, when BitAssets were mainstream ready. I doubt those will be ready for Xmas, but would love to be able to give scratch off BitSilver and BitGold cards as gifts in the future!)

[zerosum]

Freezing funds is a slippery slope.

Frustration with marketing is nothing new, but things have only been improving. Adam is legit and CAVO is a huge opportunity, Brian's crew is legit but cannot execute until we give them the go-ahead with a nice wallet and protocol v1.

I get that part. I personally only ask BM (and if possible you) to be 100% sure that:
1.There are very serious (per his/your judgment) plans, (as well as the  details of said plans available to him/you), ready to go!
2. The only thing on the way of the start of the campaign is the lack of nice wallet and protocol v1, as of yet.

[Rune]

I don't understand why FMV is being brought up, it seems like legit innovation. I agree that there has been nothing to show for the money that has been given to Brian Page so far. If he doesn't actually do anything soon, I think it would be better to simply give his remaining bonus money to the dev team, or burn it.

[mike623317]

Thank you! I am about 80% satisfied

I appreciated the response from bytemaster. I think we've seen these guys deliver what they have promised up to now and we should see a lot more over the coming months.

Lets keep moving forward.

[toast]

Freezing funds is a slippery slope.

Frustration with marketing is nothing new, but things have only been improving. Adam is legit and CAVO is a huge opportunity, Brian's crew is legit but cannot execute until we give them the go-ahead with a nice wallet and protocol v1.

[CountOfTheSparklesGhost]

Thank you! I am about 80% satisfied, which is as good as I'll get with the snark level in the OP.

[sparkles]

Freezing FMV's stake would be a disaster for BTS price.  It would easily cause a drop and loss of confidence in excess of the ~1% of BTS that it represents.

[Ander]

I feel that the 'official' markting team has actually been doing business development activities (forging relationships and partnerships with potential business partners), and not as much 'marketing'.

I dont think thats bad, its just that we havent yet seen most of the results.


At this time I'm still willing to be patient and see what they come out with once the full 1.0 release of bitshares happens.  It certainly makes sense that they would wait until the full release version before they launched significant marketing, so I am not going to blame them yet.


If the 1.0 release occurs, and then significant marketing comes out, I'll be happy.  If 1.0 comes out and then we still dont see anything much from the official team, then I will think posts like this one are justified.

[bytemaster]

Follow My Vote is a group of people not just Adam.   They are part of a larger strategic partnership that I hope will pay huge dividends for BTS in Q1 2015.  Adam and his team is helping provide a different kind of marketing effort than Brian and his team or Methodx and his team.   

Why did follow my vote get such a large stake?  Because I have faith in what Adam can do.   Things Adam & Team are working on for BTS.

1) Scratch-Off BitUSD cards of various denominations for promotional purposes and to be a physical manifestation of  BitUSD
2) Merchandising / Online Store for BitShares products
3) Attracting users and publicity to BitShares from the voting, democracy, transparent government crowd. 

Nathan is only working for Adam through the demo we are doing for CA voting officials and the work he is doing will double as infrastructure for BitShares KYC.

There are a lot of moving parts going on all at the same time.  I am not an internet marketer but Adam is.  Adam has management experience and is already helping to recruit free marketing interns and developer talent.    Adam is working very hard for BTS and was a tough negotiator (But so was I).   

Adams long-term compensation is based upon the metric of the number of users he signs up.  Brian's is based upon our market cap relative to Bitcoin.  The funds allocated to Brian are being divided among 4 high powered marketers with amazing connections.   

So what we have here is transparency from me on who I hired, but less transparency from Brian, Adam, and Bo on what they have done with the funds I trusted them with.   That said the Chinese marketing has been far more effective to date.  Brian's team is switching gears in the short term but will start seeing results this month.     

Things are moving forward and when all of these forces start firing a full force it will be quite amazing.