Author Topic: What Is Bitshares? A Financial OS.  (Read 7459 times)

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Offline Thom

If your target audience is businesses, either platform or OS terminology works pretty well. But businesses are comprised of people that make decisions based on personal knowledge and experience. Executives in the footwear business maybe thinking of platform shoes or some physical "platform" like a stage or loading dock, not the abstract concepts that make up systems.

Going back to MethodX's statement that our first focus should be on tools that suit the business community vs. end users, I'm not so sure that's right. It seems like a false dichotomy and over simplification. Businesses are just groups of people after all. The focus should be on empowering people in whatever role they function in.

Give people good quality tools to do a good job and do it with the least effort. BitShares is a tool to facilitate:
- investing
- wealth transfer
- trade & commerce
- saving safely and securely
- making informed financial decisions

How the tool helps people accomplish these things will differ of course for a person or a business.

Does Microsoft have two flavors of Office or one? What about Intuit's Quicken / Quick-Books? There's more than one way to skin a cat. Was Office built primarily with business needs in mind initially or end users? It is clear how Intuit's Quicken evolved, it was targeted towards end users first.

The market size for end users is vastly bigger than businesses, but you can charge more for business products.

I think we should focus on our tool's core functionality, and secondarily on embellishments to enhance their effectiveness for one group or another. But that's thinking like a tool producer, not a salesman for a product. That does brings to mind the tension I observed in many of the startups I worked at: generalized product design (one size fits all) or custom products.

It's so much easier on the sales force if the products they sell are tailored to each company's specific needs, then the deal just comes down to time to deliver & the cost.

On the other hand the more general the product is the bigger the market is, and the harder it is to design the product. The sales force also has a harder time matching a customer's needs to what the tool can do; they must be more creative in coming up with less efficient ways to get things done, and convince the customer it is such a better value than an expensive custom solution that they will have to wait for.
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Offline gamey

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I like to see BitShares as a platform for smart contracts. So OS metaphor works pretty well here, but it's not necessary have to be narrowed down to financial applications.

I definitely see your point. Why limit Bitshares to a single niche? But is it really wise to attempt creating an OS that does everything or is it better to focus on a niche? If Bitshares were architected from the ground up to cater toward finance, I think that would offer us a significant competitive advantage.

I agree focusing on a single niche has a lot of benefits.

So what do you think about "platform"? In a lot of cases it's used as synonym to OS. If you followed startup ecosystem, there were a lot of debates - platform vs. product vs service, and it looks like platform is investors' favorite. Look at biggest companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, Microsoft) they all try to position themselves as platform.

Another reason I like word platform over OS is because OS sounds a little bit as closed ecosystem and platform is an open one.

Nonetheless OS is a good metaphor. I believe inability to explain what is Bitshares (e.g. "BitShares has layers" http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/update/2014/12/18/What-is-BitShares/  was a good but not successful attempt) made it really hard to market and good metaphor can really help to solve this issue.

This is very well put.  Also, for the true geeks who understand what an OS is and provides, it might be a bit of a put off. Until you have smart contract functionality, the OS analogy is really stretching it for the power user/developer type. I like both words, but +5% to platform.
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Offline Method-X

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The winner is always the most user-friendly one, not the most powerful one.

Speaking as a big Apple fanboy and minimalist, I respectfully disagree. The pattern is clearly to focus on businesses first, when the technology is immature. That gets you the adoption necessary to move to the mainstream once the technology matures 10 - 20 years later. It's never simple from day one. All you need to do is look at both Microsoft and Blackberry in their early days.\

Step #1: Save money for businesses.
Step #2: Simplify.

In that order.
« Last Edit: June 03, 2015, 10:16:08 pm by Method-X »

Offline 麥可貓

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An OS is the ideal goal of BitShares, as it reminds us an important fact:
The winner is always the most user-friendly one, not the most powerful one.

Comparing Windows, MacOS(<=9 and X), and Linux, you can see while Linux can almost do anything, but the winner is never linux for average users.
Even among linux distros, the most popular distros are always newbie-friendly, not geek-friendly.

Another imortant fact is that a worse OS could win just because it has a killer app on it. For example, although I am using linux as my desktop OS, I have to intall windows inside virtualbox to use MS Office in many cases. We ergently need such app in our platform.

To sum up, I think the 'killer app' for cryptocoins is financial/merchnt adoption, this explains why bitcoin has the least function but has the largest marketcap.
« Last Edit: June 03, 2015, 08:52:00 am by 麥可貓 »
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Bitshares is an Open & Independent Financial Universe.
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Offline triox

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Bitshares is an Open & Independent Financial Universe.

Offline merivercap

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I like the sound of Financial OS.  I'll probably use that term for the fintech & business crowd...
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Offline fav

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I've had success explaining it to people already savvy enough to know what a video game emulator, and bittorrent is.

BitShares is like an emulator for real world currencies, commodities, and stocks but it runs on a network like torrents do.

that's a really good explanation!

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I've had success explaining it to people already savvy enough to know what a video game emulator, and bittorrent is.

BitShares is like an emulator for real world currencies, commodities, and stocks but it runs on a network like torrents do.

Offline Globally Distributed

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So what do you think about "platform"? In a lot of cases it's used as synonym to OS.

Platform works. That's what ethereum is calling themselves and I just wanted to differentiate bitshares a little. I would suggest sticking to finance though. I see no point in trying to be a better version of ethereum. The trick seems to be specializing to get initial market share. In the 80s, Microsoft focused on businesses while Apple focused on the individual consumer. Microsoft destroyed Apple because the end user wasn't ready for personal computing (sound familiar?). Businesses were eating up Microsoft's tech because it saved money and gave them a competitive edge.

In our case, Bitshares can be the Microsoft of blockchains and laser focus on solving the financial sector's problems. Let Etherium [try to] appeal to the common user. They will fail until much later, when this tech is maturure and people are actually ready to use it on their own. Until then, solving the financial industry's problems will take us to where we need to be. We can appeal to "everybody" when the time is appropriate.

Edit: Same dynamic was true for Blackberry. They went straight for businesses and became massively popular in their day. Only problem with both Blackberry and Microsoft is they failed (are failing) at appealing to average users when the time came.
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Offline ebit

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Offline starspirit

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So what do you think about "platform"? In a lot of cases it's used as synonym to OS.

Platform works. That's what ethereum is calling themselves and I just wanted to differentiate bitshares a little. I would suggest sticking to finance though. I see no point in trying to be a better version of ethereum. The trick seems to be specializing to get initial market share. In the 80s, Microsoft focused on businesses while Apple focused on the individual consumer. Microsoft destroyed Apple because the end user wasn't ready for personal computing (sound familiar?). Businesses were eating up Microsoft's tech because it saved money and gave them a competitive edge.

In our case, Bitshares can be the Microsoft of blockchains and laser focus on solving the financial sector's problems. Let Etherium [try to] appeal to the common user. They will fail until much later, when this tech is maturure and people are actually ready to use it on their own. Until then, solving the financial industry's problems will take us to where we need to be. We can appeal to "everybody" when the time is appropriate.

Edit: Same dynamic was true for Blackberry. They went straight for businesses and became massively popular in their day. Only problem with both Blackberry and Microsoft is they failed (are failing) at appealing to average users when the time came.
I find this a persuasive argument for initial specialisation, although that could be for business or retail. To integrate with business, we may need the bitShares "business" to be regulated in some form to have any credibility with big players. As long as we have the ability to change (or remove) jurisdiction at some later point.

Offline Permie

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Platform works. That's what ethereum is calling themselves and I just wanted to differentiate bitshares a little. I would suggest sticking to finance though. I see no point in trying to be a better version of ethereum. The trick seems to be specializing to get initial market share. In the 80s, Microsoft focused on businesses while Apple focused on the individual consumer. Microsoft destroyed Apple because the end user wasn't ready for personal computing (sound familiar?). Businesses were eating up Microsoft's tech because it saved money and gave them a competitive edge.

In our case, Bitshares can be the Microsoft of blockchains and laser focus on solving the financial sector's problems. Let Etherium [try to] appeal to the common user. They will fail until much later, when this tech is maturure and people are actually ready to use it on their own. Until then, solving the financial industry's problems will take us to where we need to be. We can appeal to "everybody" when the time is appropriate.
+5% +5% +5%

Appealing to businesses to shares profits with moves the motivation to expand the ecosystem to a profit driven entity rather than attempting to convince the end-user to change their ways.
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Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

A metaphor is an important tool used to convey complicated ideas to the general public. Since the beginning of Bitcoin (and especially Bitshares) we've had a very hard time coming up with a simple way to convey the core essence of what is being created here. Is it a company, community, bank or a government? The truth is, Bitshares has the potential to be all of these things. So what do all of these things have in common? What is their essence?

ANSWER: They can all be described as types of operating systems.

I'd like to conduct a fun little experiment. Pretend like you're chatting with a relatively tech savvy person and he asks you "what is bitshares?" In your own words, describe Bitshares using the FinancialOS metaphor as your foundation.

Stan is probably got the best answer, it depends on what works best for your target audience.

Your ANSWER is lost on the audience you defined in your first sentence. I interface with the general public as a computer expert offering tech services and training in my local community. I can tell you that even those at the 90th percentile of tech knowledge around here don't grasp what an operating system does, anymore than a typical housewife understands the role of an air conditioning compressor in her car or home.

"Tech Savvy" is actually a fairly broad term. To all but a very, very small few members of this community, "operating system" is a highly descriptive analogy, a metaphor that fits well.

The key to using any analogy is it's suitability to the target audience. I have had to explain computer issues to a very wide range of people, and when I do I often have to find the right analogy until I see the light bulb go on over their head. Car analogies work well with most men, but for women it's much harder to come up with common examples of systems they are familiar with. If car / mechanical analogies don't click with them, I usually think about churches, institutions or some type of group organization and the control points in them and how things get done or resources managed. Things work well for men, groups work better for women.

Yup.. no one analogy is going to suit every audience. Well said.

Though there is one word I have seen missing from all of the attempts that everyone big or small understands in a heartbeat...

MONEY

BitShares provides a worldwide platform to allow people to use money without banks.

In the end.. assets transactions widgets.. whatever you want to call it.. it's all money.. and money is something everyone understands.

So if you want to call it a single analogical word/phrase.. I would have to go with BitShares is a Bankless Money Platform (BMP).

Sooo BitShares BMP.


Theres my shot. :)

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Offline Method-X

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So what do you think about "platform"? In a lot of cases it's used as synonym to OS.

Platform works. That's what ethereum is calling themselves and I just wanted to differentiate bitshares a little. I would suggest sticking to finance though. I see no point in trying to be a better version of ethereum. The trick seems to be specializing to get initial market share. In the 80s, Microsoft focused on businesses while Apple focused on the individual consumer. Microsoft destroyed Apple because the end user wasn't ready for personal computing (sound familiar?). Businesses were eating up Microsoft's tech because it saved money and gave them a competitive edge.

In our case, Bitshares can be the Microsoft of blockchains and laser focus on solving the financial sector's problems. Let Etherium [try to] appeal to the common user. They will fail until much later, when this tech is maturure and people are actually ready to use it on their own. Until then, solving the financial industry's problems will take us to where we need to be. We can appeal to "everybody" when the time is appropriate.

Edit: Same dynamic was true for Blackberry. They went straight for businesses and became massively popular in their day. Only problem with both Blackberry and Microsoft is they failed (are failing) at appealing to average users when the time came.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2015, 09:58:11 pm by Method-X »