This is part of a relevant conversation I had with Discord user Diogo Gomes in Bitshares Discord #ltm channel.
Diogo Gomes:@Clockwork, in your opinion what is marketing?
(sorry if it seems a strange question but is important for me)
Clockwork:Not strange. Although not particularly related to my committee proposal.
Still, got a few hours?
Let's see if i can do a very short high level description.
Marketing includes all those actions by an entity (company, product, person etc. being marketed) either directly or by proxy (not in the bitshares sense
) performed in order to create new customers(/consumers/users etc),
keep existing ones and ensure the company/product/service/etc fulfills their needs/wants in the best possible way.
Depending on which part of these is targeted there can be many marketing goals. From increasing brand equity (i.e. making the entiry stonger within a market in terms of public perception) to educating users as to the use of a product/service.
And ofcourse all of those "sub-goals" can use a myriad of activities and channels either alone or in unison to succceed on those goals, from a customer support agent on a fb page to a TV commercial to a Corporate Social Responsibility action etc.
Diogo Gomes:@Clockwork What is your opinion about partnerships and merges with others protocols if, for that, big changes will be needed in the core code?
Clockwork:Well. For a start I am open to all possibilities when it comes to other protocols and actions that will expand bitshares features and customer base.
Each one though would have to be evaluated on its own merits.
Big changes in core code are not bad per se, if and only if they
a) don't cause problems for existing bitshares functionality
b) they provide more than they cost
For example, a possible merger/partnership that would require a large code change but would expand userbase to 200% the current userbase (thus providing even more income to the network) would definately be welcome.
However, as I said, each such suggestions would have to be evaluated on its own merits, business case, costs, benefits, and potential pitfalls and obviously subjected to stakeholder voting.
Since you mentioned partnerships, partnerships with businesses simply USING the bitshares network are something I am not so keen about, simply because they're very very difficult to judge.
It would be nice to have "official bitshares partners", but how do you go about knowing enough?
From accounting to background checks to day to day operations etc.
If you consider the resposibility towards the bitshares stakeholders, it's not easy and such a badge would be seen as a proof of legitimacy when in truth there are still many unknown factors.
The global nature of this doesnt help either.
For example, an ICO of a bitshares based business in say Poland may sound great.
Their business plan is solid.
You somehow manage to get background checks on all people involved.
The team is very active and public with many updates to keep track of progress.
Their accounting is transparent.
And so on. However, do you (or anyone) know enough about polish corporate law to ensure it doesn't fail on a technicality? Chances are no and knowing enough to be able to provide them with an Official Bitshares Partner status would require a large amount of funds (in the example above, hiring a polish corporate lawyer to get a proper legal opinion)
Maybe in the future as the platform grows, these could be covered by a WP or even paid for by businesses wanting to achieve this status. As it stands now it's very difficult to do and possibly a waste of resources.
Diogo Gomes:@Clockwork In your opinion, what is the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the entire Bitshares ecosystem?
Clockwork:Greatest strength, as mentioned in the forum thread, is the tech in general. From the DPoS system/stakeholder voting/committee/chain-funded development to the actual transaction speeds/features/bitassets etc.
Greatest weakness is probably the same. In the sense that it's very hard for your average user to wrap their head around which leads to voter apathy thus leading to less decentralisation (which should be Bitrshares' strongest point) as well as causing a lack of direction since there is a lot of opposition to certain suggestions with no suggested alternatives.
Disclaimer:I have re-ordered some of the answers and clarified some points for forum use compared to the original conversation.
I have notified Diogo Gomes to check in case he feels context has been lost by my editing.
The conversation continued on to more marketing discussion which I feel is not quite relevant for this committee member proposal but is publicly available for LTM members in the Bitshares Discord here:
https://discord.gg/zYMc4Ak if you want to read more.
Topic: [Committee Member] - clockwork's proposal to join the bitshares committee (Read 13540 times)
