Free App possible?

[roadscape]

The primary ways to monetize/support a social network:

1. ads (sponsors)
2. paid features / subscriptions
3. selling users' data
4. donations

You forgot about the attention economy? You simply let advertisers buy the attention directly from the users. Synereo has a good business model, as does GetGems.

You can't use the ad model on decentralized platforms without violating people's intellectual property rights, specifically their attention is their property.

So the way to monetize it is to build enough of a network effect that advertisers will want to access the attention of the users, then pay the users in your UIA when they watch ads. Pre-allocate the UIA to pay for your own development.

These are good points, but imo still fall into "ads" category. There's definitely a lot of room for creativity there... for example, paying users to re-post advertisements, allowing users to promote their own posts, etc.

When it comes paying users to watch or click ads, it's very hard to defend against fraud. Google has been in an uphill battle against click fraud botnets for years. It's doable but gets complex when you account for all the ways to game such a system.

I don't think anyone has tried to create an open-source ad-free social network driven by micropayments, have they? That's something I'd like to see..

[luckybit]

The primary ways to monetize/support a social network:

1. ads (sponsors)
2. paid features / subscriptions
3. selling users' data
4. donations

You forgot about the attention economy? You simply let advertisers buy the attention directly from the users. Synereo has a good business model, as does GetGems.

You can't use the ad model on decentralized platforms without violating people's intellectual property rights, specifically their attention is their property.

So the way to monetize it is to build enough of a network effect that advertisers will want to access the attention of the users, then pay the users in your UIA when they watch ads. Pre-allocate the UIA to pay for your own development.

[jaran]

Or more generically speaking the DAC rewards users with REWARD tokens  that can be exchanged for any DAC owned app's token at whatever exchange rate the committee sets per app.

[jaran]

Do you see a scenario where the bitshares DAC would own the app  and thus reward users with the tokens for taking revenue generating action?  The DAC owns the app by buying it from the developer through a worker proposal.

For example the DAC owns the app/token TWEET.

User places trade earns him 10 tweets.  User upgrades account earns him 1000 tweets.  New accounts get free tweets once they deposit x amount of bitshares.

When user sends a tweet to the DAC with the message its logged on the blockchain and of course sending the token to the DAC is "free".  The tweet token goes back into the DAC's tweet holdings and is recycled.

[bytemaster]

If you make things "free" then you must limit the supply. This means rate limiting accounts.

You can also set things up so that users "earn" the means to pay.  For example, a competitor to Open Ledger may use free "tweets" as a means of getting users to sign up through their centralized service and then make money on the referral income.  In this case, the OL competitor would give the user the pennies required to pay the fee to the network.   From the user's perspective the tweet is free, but from the network's perspective it was fully paid for.

It is like a website appears free, but the person producing it is still paying for bandwidth.

[jaran]

Correct nothing is free eventually.  In your example with the data being the users actual payment in a decentralized app that data would be freely available for everyone on the blockchain, correct?

Back to the decentralized twitter example...

1. All tweets (data) are available to everyone on the blockchain.  This is good because there is no central authority to shut off access to the tweets like twitter did...destroying numerous companies that built around it. 

2. Every time a user post a tweet they have to pay money.  This is bad because users won't use the app if they have to pay.


Assume ads wont cover the transaction cost.

In the bitshares world could the DAC cover the cost of the transactions  for the distributed twitter app?  The DAC would do this to attract users and monetize them through other avenues such as trading etc.

[puppies]

Also remember.  Nothing in this world is free.  If you aren't paying then someone else is paying on your behalf.  Chances are they want something from you. 

This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Perhaps they want to rent your eyeballs out to their advertisers, or to aggregate your preferences and sell that information to researchers.  In many cases the benefit you receive from their service is greater than what you have to give up to get it. 

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

I am not sure its clear what is being asked here.

You are right.  Sorry for my poorly formed question.

I was trying to get at what are the differences/concerns of  creating a "free" centralized app vs a "free" decentralized app - if any.  But i dont understand the decentralized development model enough to form a more concrete question.

well.. best I could say is that decentralized means it is not in the hands of one entity and is secured by the blockchain, while centralized dev would put it totally within your control. So any liability that results from the app such as legal actions would fall right on your shoulders, while with decentralized it is far more difficult.

[jaran]

I am not sure its clear what is being asked here.

You are right.  Sorry for my poorly formed question.

I was trying to get at what are the differences/concerns of  creating a "free" centralized app vs a "free" decentralized app - if any.  But i dont understand the decentralized development model enough to form a more concrete question.

[roadscape]

The primary ways to monetize/support a social network:

1. ads (sponsors)
2. paid features / subscriptions
3. selling users' data
4. donations

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

I have not done any research on this so apologies if this is obvious etc.

How would one create a decentralized free app on a blockchain - specifically bitshares?

Say you wanted to create twitter.  All messages/data are stored on the blockchain so it cost money in the form of transactions to post and store them. ..And of course its free for end users so they pay nothing to post tweets.  How do you monetize and deal with situations like growth before revenue?

I am not sure its clear what is being asked here.

The obvious answer to me seems to be do your research and create a business plan accordingly.

[jaran]

I have not done any research on this so apologies if this is obvious etc.

How would one create a decentralized free app on a blockchain - specifically bitshares?

Say you wanted to create twitter.  All messages/data are stored on the blockchain so it cost money in the form of transactions to post and store them. ..And of course its free for end users so they pay nothing to post tweets.  How do you monetize and deal with situations like growth before revenue?