There is money sitting in the reserves to do marketing too.
All that needs to be done is deliver something, establish a reputation, then deploy a convincing worker proposal and get funds to go further.

The latest marketing trend seems to be paying "Influencers" on youtube with a following.

Every since youtube started lowering their payouts, and people are sick of seeing the pop up ads... it's only influencers that can make conversions into sales these days.

Similar with people running blogs and newsletters....  So any marketing team would be making use of influencers.

Dan Larimer use to be our influencer with his blog.  News Media would report on what he wrote.  We didn't replace him with that...

Glad to hear about the other marketing teams @nomoreheros7

It is not surprise, because most of people who read this forum (including myself) don't understand a crap in marketing. I guess, if you know how to do it, the best is just go ahead and do it.

I understand that..

Marketing is about delivering "feel good emotions" and "perceived trust" which is what investors thrive on.

Good technology like bitshares is about delivering "a stable, and reliable solution" which technogeeks thrive on.

Both technogeeks and investors need to participate together.  So if we're just delivering tech, but not good enough marketing, we need to improve.

Step 1: Have everyone realize this
Step 2: Create a worker proposal with a lead project person willing to take the responsibility of managing the project funds
Step 3: Approve the proposal
Step 4: Spend some money by paying marketers to encourage more money and more users to come into the system

The referral system is only one tiny part of what we need to do.

I read somewhere we have a bitshares foundation. I don't know who runs it, how many people are involved, or who funds them. None of that important information is on their website.

waves is a very bad example. they're lying and misleading their idiot investors at every possible chance.

if that's your understanding of professional marketing, I must refuse the idea.

That is true in my opinion (I researched Waves, I don't like them either, and something is fishy about them. I could elaborate more.. but let's stick on topic.)

...but the only reason Waves is afloat is because of marketing.

Look at what Waves offers its employees for benefits:

— Full-time work in the office next to Kropotkinskaya metro station
 — Flexible schedule
 — Competitive salary higher than average on market
 — Free English and Chinese classes
 — Free coffee and cookies

Why English and Chinese?  So their developers can talk to investors and show up at tradeshows "for marketing".

Now imagine Bitshares, with solid technology + professional marketing via a professional agency. Having both benefit us, we'd skyrocket in growth and adoption.

One of the hardest things in this industry is for developers and crypto users to realize their limits. Crypto-technically adept people in general have too much ego and can't spot their own faults.  This is human nature (otherwise we'd be flawless with our thinking).

Refusing my idea of marketing because you don't like waves isn't an appropriate reason to not consider the issue.

My comment to that person on steemit was this:
To be really fair though... Bitshares has plenty of marketing, but it could use more.
..and when I said that, I was thinking of @Stan at the time.

The audio link talking about this subject is here:

https://soundcloud.com/beyond-bitcoin-hangouts/bitshares-open-source-hangout-45-20171104full-edited-version

It starts at 4 mins, 15 seconds in that archive and runs over 20 minutes long and has a couple different people talking to the speaker as well.

Get BTS on https://www.bithumb.com

Are you sure? I just went there, and BTS is not listed.   Their translations are very poor, not a lot of confidence in that website.

Nice catch @fav

Is there any way to find out approximately how long this has been happening, and how many referred users were sent?

So, if anyone has one, i'm happy to comment in the future, white papers, nice diagrams, charts, whatever is ok for a marketing event, not for any serious development. I'm sure most will agree on this.

Since there are more users, and investors, using Bitshares than there are developers, there is always a wide divide of people who have opinions, suggestions, and complaints.

Right about now is when the appreciation of the teams Bytemaster use to lead developing Bitshares is missed.

It's like the system is on autopilot (development wise) and only now are people raising important questions about how the system works, where trust lies, how much trust is "too much trust" and now a recent discussion about NDA's among proxy witnesses has been raised.

This is all very long overdue, and I'm happy to see it.

There is a lot of interested money in this platform (always has been), so financing our future is going to be quite easy.

But when you say:

I seriously have to stop answering and stop talking completely. There is so much going on, and currently how it's being presented is just a talk, even from my side.

You are incorrect.

It's not "just a talk".  It's a united level of understanding, that is really important going forward.

Deliver that as proposal even with a broken monkey in the box, and i'm sure that any serious businessman related to this network will push the proposal through.

I'd rather not see lots of proposals with a broken monkey in the box.  That just leads to confusion, frustration, and can camouflage real decent proposals if they are hidden among all the other broken and non-possible proposals.

I hear your frustration, but removing talk in the favor of creating broken monkey in the box proposals is not a better solution.