Author Topic: DAC proposal: BitMindshare -- a paid messaging service  (Read 8807 times)

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Offline tonyk

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No you have it right. But you expect for granting free license someone to do all the development work  needed to put his pretty complicated centralized idea on a blockchain (all that for a pretty uncertain profit potential, and totally unclear benefits of DAC vs regular company). If you really have built the code for your site, you sure are aware that virtually nothing can be directly used and moved to a blockchain/DAC. The remaining business logic that must be accommodated is also extremely complex (read time consuming). And I repeat, all that work for unconvincing profit potential and or advantages (other than promotion of your services among all DAC shareholders, which is benefit for you not for them).


!!!The above is just my take and nobody else’s, someone might find it doable!!!
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline jimbursch

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but what does the DAC do?

Based on my understanding so far of Bitshares and how DACs work, the BitMindshare DAC blockchain functions as a ledger of ownership interest in the revenue generated by BitMindshare.com. The value of BitMindshare DAC shares will reflect the market's estimation of future revenue generation, and it will be in the interest of current shareholders to maximize both current and future revenue generation. Minimally, shareholder participation as users of BitMindshare.com will contribute to revenue generation. More growth will occur when shareholders elect a management team (delegates?) that can further promote BitMindshare and reinvest some of the revenue for growth.

But I'm a newb, so I may have it wrong.




Offline toast

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I am proposing to grant the BitMindshare DAC a license free of charge, since it will be the prototype. Subsequent licenses will be sold.

One thing I am interested in is price discovery of affiliate licenses. Perhaps subsequent licenses should be auctioned.

but what does the DAC do?
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Offline donkeypong

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I really hope I have missed something here but can I ask:

Can you explain why this proposed DAC is anything else other than promotion on your part – i.e. attempt to sell one franchise license of you remaining centralized business?

Get used to it, I'm afraid. In a couple of years, the DAC ideas we know and love will represent only a fraction of the overall market. Most of it will use the blockchain to promote and outsource other (not strictly DAC) business functions.

Offline jimbursch

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I am proposing to grant the BitMindshare DAC a license free of charge, since it will be the prototype. Subsequent licenses will be sold.

One thing I am interested in is price discovery of affiliate licenses. Perhaps subsequent licenses should be auctioned.

Offline tonyk

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I really hope I have missed something here but can I ask:

Can you explain why this proposed DAC is anything else other than promotion on your part – i.e. attempt to sell one franchise license of you remaining centralized business?
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline jimbursch

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Here is what I guess would be BitMindshare.com alpha:
http://bitmindshare.mymindshare.com/

It is fully functioning, so feel free to mess around with it.

Offline jimbursch

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Thank you very much for the feedback and the opportunity to  clarify my proposal.

A formatted version of the short biz plan for MyMindshare is available here:
https://mymindshare.com/businessplan/mymindshare_short_bizplanVERSION2.pdf

I am proposing "BitMindshare the DAC" which will be licensed to operate "BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare" which will generate revenue as a MyMindshare affiliate. The affiliate program is described in fuller detail here:
https://mymindshare.com/index.php?view=affiliate

So, in answer to toast, MyMindshare is and remains a traditional company (currently comprising one person).

One idea I have (this needs to be vetted) is to issue a share in BitMindshare to every member of the Bitshares community (however that may be defined). This will incentivize the community to use and promote BitMindshare. There is something elegant about the idea of users also being shareholders in the enterprise.

Now let's take a flight of fancy into the future, when Bitshares is wildly successsful and the forum and reddit are chock full of noisy chatter about this wonderful invention. This creates a problem for Bob Entrepreneur who has a great idea he wants to pitch to Alice Angel, who has gotten tired of all the empty chatter in the forums and on reddit.

Enter BitMindshare.com, where Bob can post his pitch targeting just Bitshares Angels. Bob deposits $11 in his BitMindshare.com account, $1 of which is paid as commission to "BitMindshare the DAC", which leaves Bob with $10, which he then uses to fund his post to 100 angels at $0.10 each.

To Alice, who is fabulously wealthy thanks to her investment acumen, $0.10 is a trivial amount of money. But Alice has found that the posts on BitMindshare.com tend to be of better quality than the cruft that gets posted on the Bitshares forum, simply because it costs something to get posts seen on BitMindshare.com. Also, posts on BitMindshare.com are targeted and rated, which also reduces the noise/signal ratio.

Eventually (surprisingly quickly) Alice finds herself with a balance of $10 in her BitMindshare.com account, which she decides to cash out. When she does so, $1 is paid to "BitMindshare the DAC" as commission and $0.50 is paid to MyMindshare, leaving Alice with $8.50 for a treat at Starbucks.

Alice also happens to be a delegate for "BitMindshare the DAC", which means that she represents all the shareholders in deciding what "BitMindshare the DAC" should do with the $2 it has recently accrued in its MyMindshare account. Basiclly she has two choices -- she can leave the $2 in the MyMindshare account and use it to fund promotional activities for BitMindshare, or she can cash out the $2 and pay a share-burning dividend to all the shareholders of "BitMindshare the DAC".

Thus ends our little flight of fancy into the wonderful world of Bitshares and Mindshares. I hope this helps clarify what I have in mind with this proposal.

« Last Edit: June 14, 2014, 01:18:04 pm by jimbursch »

Offline CLains

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My immediate reaction reading through is that you need the blockchain to prevent bots to abuse the system. The CAPTCHA paradigm is stupid, and will become even more stupid as pattern recognition gets better, which it will. Then we need to tie identity up to the clicks, and then we might as well just tie reputation into the clicks as well, as the people who pay to have their content viewed would pay more for highly reputable individuals.

That said, I did not quite get the model yet. As for presentation I suggest bolding the headings and include an abstract on the top, where you summarize your proposal.

And as Toast pointed out, try to explain what the blockchain will do. For instance, the blockchain can keep track of your ad-consumer identity and the reputation of this identity, furthermore, the blockchain can automatically do the transaction when you use this identity to view an ad, and give you proportionally to your reputation according to how the ad-seller identity has specified the buy-order. Following the ebay logic, the ad-seller can also have a reputation that is displayed on each buy-order that the ad-consumer can see.. etc. I guess the worry is that one does not need a unique DAC for just this purpose, as a general one that is used for other stuff can serve your purpose. This in turn depends on the value of launching one DAC for each purpose, etc.

Btw, the video is great. I think it is a really cool idea.. :)
« Last Edit: June 13, 2014, 06:47:18 pm by CLains »

Offline toast

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You described a centralized service which is better left centralized, but you didn't describe what the DAC would do.
Or do you mean you would replace this company with a DAC? I think it would work better as a traditional company.

What kind of advantages do you see in using decentralization / blockchains for this?

Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.

Offline jimbursch

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Hello Bitshares community

I am a php/mysql developer and the creator/founder of the MyMindshare paid messaging system, which can be found online at MyMindshare.com. I am new to Bitshares, but I do have experience in working with Bitcoin -- this year I denominated MyMindshare in Bitcoin.

I would like to propose the creation of a DAC which will be granted a MyMindshare affiliate license. Below is the short business plan I have written for MyMindshare which describes how MyMindshare and its affiliate program works. The DAC will be a prototype for subsequent DACs that will have to purchase MyMindshare affiliate licences. We can call the prototype DAC "BitMindshare".

I would like to invite an established and trusted member of the Bitshares community to act as a mentor for me, since I am new to Bitshares and have a limited understanding of some (okay, many) aspects of Bitshares and DACs.

In addition to the site at MyMindshare.com, which is fully operational, and the business plan below, you can also view some videos that I made here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq13ETGL8l9E-TFep92bc2Q

MyMindshare Paid Messaging System


Introduction

Sometimes a message is more valuable to the sender than it is to the receiver, especially when there is a weak or non-existent relationship between the sender and receiver.

Imagine that Alice and Bob are members of a dating service. Alice is very attractive and receives many messages from men in the dating service, to the point where she finds it tiresome to sort through the messages. Bob thinks that Alice is fantastic and he really wants to tell her a little about himself and ask her for a date. How can Bob make it  worthwhile for Alice to read his message ahead of all the other men who are sending her messages?

Can you imagine other situations which are analagous to Alice and Bob's? One example that comes to mind is advertising, where consumers play the part of Alice and advertisers play the part of Bob.

When a message is more important to the sender that it is to the receiver, the sender needs to attach some value to the message to make it worthwhile for the receiver. This is especially true in an environment where there are many senders competing for the attention of a receiver, and it is especially true when the marginal cost of sending a message is near zero -- an environment full of spam.

MyMindshare is a paid messaging system that enables senders to attach real value to their messages (“Twitter with an eBay business model”). It does this by combining a bidding and rating system with a surveying and targeting system.

The Bidding System

At MyMindshare.com, users find messages with a bid amount attached to each message. A “bid” is the amount of money a sender attaches to a message for the recipient. The sender can also place a bid for the recipient to visit a web page.

After the recipient reads a message or visits a web page and accepts the bid, the bid amount is transferred from the senders’s account to the recipient's account.
Senders set their own bid amounts, including the option to set a free bid. Messages are sorted by the bid amount so that the highest bids appear first.

A keyword search function allows users to narrow the list of messaages to those that s/he is interested in at the time.

The Rating System

When a recipient accepts a bid, s/he also has an opportunity to rate the message, giving simple feedback in answer to the question, “Was it worthwhile?” The message is then given a rating based on the average of the feedback given by recipients.

By default, the message list is sorted by bid amount, then by rating, so that the highest bids with the highest ratings appear at the top of the list. Users have the option to re-sort the list by rating so that only the highest rated messages appear at the top of the list.

The Surveying System

A surveying system is integrated into the bidding system in such a way that it is a natural part of the process of viewing messages, enabling users to easily build a dynamic profile.

Survey questions appear one at a time as simple yes/no questions and when a user answers a question, new messages are immediately added, based on how s/he answered the question. The new messages will be more relevant and tend to have higher bid amounts, thus rewarding the user for answering survey questions.

The Targeting System

The key to unlocking the value of mindshare is to deliver the right message to the right person. The surveying system enables users to voluntarily profile themselves and the targeting system enables senders to deliver their message based on that profile.

At no time do senders see personally identifying information, thus protecting the privacy of users. Senders know that their messages are delivered to the people who fit the desired profile, but they never know who those people are individually.

In addition to enabling senders to target their messages, the combination of the surveying system and the rating system enables senders to learn the profile of the people who respond positively to their message, thus enabling them to finely target their message to just the right people.

For example, a sender might place a low bid casting a wide net and learn that men between the ages of 25 and 35 who are parents and dine out regularly respond positively to their message. The sender can then post a higher bid amount targeting just those people who fit that profile. This is how messages get more relevant and more valuable to users.

Marketing Plan: The Affiliate Program

The purpose of the affiliate program is to promote the propagation and adoption of the MyMindshare messaging system.

There are two parts of an affiliate business:

-- Growth business
-- Core business


Both businesses require the purchase of an affiliate license to operate.

Growth business: 50% commission on license sales

The growth business is the business of selling MyMindshare affiliate licenses. The advantage of selling affiliate licenses is that the commission on license sales can be as much as 50%, which means that it can get very profitable very quickly. There are, however, some risks in the business of selling affiliate licenses.

New license sales may be limited, suspended, or terminated altogether depending on market conditions related to the Ponzi Risk Factor (see below)

The commission rate on new license sales may change (10% - 50%) depending on the Ponzi Risk Factor.

License holders can re-sell licenses, and may do so at a price below the price of a new license, which may make it more difficult to sell new licenses.

Ultimately, the true VALUE of a license, regardless of the price, will be determined by the quality of the core business that is developed with the license. Due to these risks, only experienced Internet marketing organizations and professionals should consider the purchase of an affiliate license.

Core business: 10% commission on message volume

The core business of MyMindshare is the trading of mindshare, or the sending and receiving of  messages. Typically an "Advertiser" is the sender of a message and the "Consumer" is the receiver. However, in the MyMindshare system, anyone can be a sender or receiver.

In the MyMindshare messaging system their are two events from which commission revenue can be generated:

Deposit of funds: 10%
Cash out of funds: 10%

Commission is generated when any user for whom the licensee is indicated as the "source" completes one of these transactions. For example, when an "Advertiser" deposits funds in their account, the licensee will collect a 10% commission, and when a "Consumer" cashes out, the licensee will again collect a 10% commission. Licensees who are the "source" of both the Advertiser and the Consumer will collect a total 20% commission on the transaction value.

There are three ways to grow the core business:
1. Increase registered users
2. Increase the volume and value of messages
3. Sell an affiliate license to someone who does the above

The ultimate value of an affiliate license is determined by the core business that is sourced by the license. A license will become worthless if the core business is not developed.

Ponzi Risk Factor (PRF)

The Ponzi Risk Factor is a calculation of the ratio of growth business to core business in the MyMindshare system. A PRF is calculated for every affiliate license.

If the growth business gets out of proportion to the core business, there is a risk that the business will be perceived as a Ponzi scheme (or a pyramid scheme), which is unethical and possibly illegal. When the PRF is outside an acceptable range, measures must be taken to bring the business into balance by increasing core business or curtailing affiliate license sales.

NOTE: The core business of client licensees is included in the calculation of each license PRF, which means that it is better for PRF to sell licenses to people/organizations that can build the core business.

Create your own affiliate site

MyMindshare affiliate licensees can create affiliate sites on any topic or for any community. A site can be created for a home town or a favorite hobby. Licensees can build a business on the topic they know or topic they love, whether it's fly fishing or financial products.

« Last Edit: June 14, 2014, 04:58:39 pm by jimbursch »