Want to make sure you’re onboard as we hurtle across the cloutiverse 🌌? Sign up for our Substack HERE. We deploy every edition (+ special features) there.
Whew, we made it (*wipes sweat from brow*).
Here’s to hoping you all had a nice work week. Pretty quiet all things considered over here on BitClout. Maybe some of y’all caught up on your day jobs or sumthin’ like that. We sure didn’t 🤪 (and also, what day jobs?).
Whether you’re like us and still scrolled through BitClout and Discord this week, or whether you got something of substance done, there’s one thing we can all agree on … it’s time for a drink (or whatever your preferred method of unwinding is). Tonight’s tunes pay homage to a legend gone too early- Biz Markie. Rest easy king. So pour one out for Biz, and join us for another Friday Night Happy Hour! 🍺🍹
Guest cover design by @JeffVillanova
Bits on the menu today:
- BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt ⚡️
- Ubiquitous UX drops: The roadmap crystallizes 🔮
- Projects in focus: @CloutVid sparks connections & collabs ⚡
- The cloutifieds: Wen @PrismWeb3? 🔜 (*artzy fartzy clouters wanted!*)
- F.N.H.H op-eds: When social media becomes productive 💪
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
Before you booze up too hard, make sure to take a glance at which creators made the biggest moves today, brought to you by @bitcloutsignal. You might just want to buy one of them a drink ;)
Same goes for the community projects side of the table… who’s poppin’ bottles tn 🍾🍾🍾? Let’s ask @bithunt:
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: The roadmap crystallizes 🔮
Since our last write-up of all things on the dev front on Wednesday (scope it here), things have been pretty quiet again in terms of new drops 💦.
In this lull, we’ve still received some important updates from @diamondhands on the near-term BitClout roadmap. While his latest comments largely reinforce the vision he’s iteratively laid out in FAQs, they’re important insofar as the same questions continue to pop up from the community, namely … when are we really going to start cooking with gas in here ⛽???
Here’s the latest exchange between BitClout notables, which was catalyzed by @joshua_cottrell and data from @BitsTODAY edition 058:
While not news per se, it’s helpful for those of us on here who are engaging everyday to get these regular updates from daddy Diamondhands. No, they‘re not easing off the gas pedal. Rather, behind the scenes, we imagine they’re working frenetically to roll out big ol’ massive updates, like the NFTs we’re all eagerly awaiting, as well as liaising with exchanges to enhance liquidity and global access to $clout. Just this week, we got another $clout listing on @AscendEX_Global (read up on that drop here).
In a world that moves as fast as the cloutiverse, it’s easy to get impatient for BitClout to go broad market. But fundamentals and a strong foundation are important. We’re still very much in the buidling phase 🧱🏗️. Now’s the time to sit back, get the next round of 🍺 flowing, and build as a community, too. There’ll come a day (ideally soon), where we wish we had some spare time (and the chance to buy $clout @ $100???) back. 🔮⌛📈
(Editor’s note: BTFD ya nerds!)
#3 Projects in focus: @CloutVid sparks connections & collabs ⚡
Enjoying this happy hour but wish it was a little more … face to face? Trust us, so do we. While we wait for the first-ever in-person @BitsTODAY event (👀), @CloutVid’s got you covered w/ a new way to make connections on BitClout.
Their initial product, which you can test drive over at cloutvid.io, is effectively a BitClout native version of popular, randomized video chat sites like Omegle or Chatroulette. Already integrated with BitClout identity for seamless connectivity, the team, which includes @JasonKhoury, @1dolinski and @uddeshya, is targeting additional integrations such as in-app follow and 💎 functionality. Further, with creator coin price matching and other optional specifications to allow creators to filter who they might be matched with, @CloutVid aims to become a bilateral place for creators to discover one another, chat over a cold one on a Friday, and who knows, maybe even collab? As notes @1dolinski,
You’re not going to [find opportunities to collaborate] in your feed or in someone’s DMs… if you talk to someone face to face, you’re more likely to find potential partnerships.
@nvo gave it a spin today and after some user error on his part (you’d think he could work a mic by now), he enjoyed some good chats with users like @flanagan who he already follows but hadn’t had the chance to connect with 1–1 on yet. Especially in the dog days of flatlining DAUs, products like @CloutVid could be a fresh way to spark some new energy in this joint ⚡🔌.
#4 The cloutifieds: Wen @PrismWeb3? 🔜 (*Artzy fartzy clouters wanted!*)
⚠️ CALLING ALL CREATIVES ⚠️
@HPaulson and co. are days away from launching what promises to be one of the hottest drops on BitClout this summer 🥵🥵🥵. The project we all can’t wait to get access to? @PrismWeb3. What do we know about @PrismWeb3 so far? Pretty little publicly, but based on the criteria for feedback on their private alpha, it looks like this is going to be a product / platform all for creators who excel in multi-media formats 📷🎨🎥. A decentralized Instagram if you will… Decentragram?
Speaking of that private alpha? While we all eagerly await the release of @PrismWeb3, @HPaulson put out a call for folks to come and provide feedback on what they’re building:
This is an outstanding opportunity to a) get an advanced sneak-peek at the product b) make sure your voice is heard as builders create the platform of the future c) plot how you’re gonna make it 🌧️ as a creator on @PrismWeb3 💪.
What’re u waiting for? Head on over to this form to throw your 🧢 in the ring.
#5 F.N.H.H op-eds: When social media becomes productive 💪
Another Friday, another @joshua_cottrell take over of our op-ed section. Y’all starting to notice a pattern here? 😉 In any case, need a bit of #hopium with your cocktail? @joshua_cottrell is serving it up today. Take a gander at this thoughtful BitClout bull case 🐂
The creator economy is ripe for disruption. New creators starting with zero followers have slim chances of getting noticed. Meanwhile established creators pay out anywhere from 5% to 20+% of their earnings to the platforms that host their work. It’s a broken system. It gets even worse when you consider how many people have been trying to build an audience on traditional social media for years with little to show for it.
For me, BitClout offers the most tangible path to disrupting that system.
1. Creators can start earning on day 1, even if they don’t have an audience
2. It integrates social incentives with financial incentives
3. It takes a smaller % of creator earnings, and, more importantly, passes on the majority of engagements’ value directly to creators.
4. Everyone — including creators themselves — can invest in BitClout
No, BitClout isn’t necessarily the best option for every creator at this moment, particularly for people with an existing audience. If you’re an established writer you may still be better off on Substack (for now). If you’re a model, you may have more luck on OnlyFans. If you’re a Youtuber you’re probably doing fine on YouTube, and maybe you’ve even added Patreon. Those platforms established a niche and scaled up their audiences.
But what I love about BitClout is that it can be developed and adapted to any of these niches. More importantly, it serves a massively underserved segment of the market: small and up-and-coming creators. Have you tried starting a brand new account on Instagram lately? Have you maybe tried to get Patreon supporters for your new and unknown artwork? Good luck. The platform is saturated with content from millions of other creators.
BitClout gets around this in two ways:
- It can provide nodes with highly targeted niche communities, which means you will be more likely to reach a pool of people willing to pay for your work.
- It allows anyone to start earning immediately by posting meaningful content.
Disrupting the creator economy
For every $99 made by most social media creator platforms <$1 makes it to the creators. That needs to be the other way around.
Millions of artists are competing for a useless resource on Instagram: Likes and engagements. Those useless interactions only empower a fraction of a fraction of users to ever garner enough attention to monetize their presence. But Instagram makes a tidy sum collecting these artists’ data and using their activity for targeted advertisements. We’re all working for free for these traditional social media titans.
BitClout skews the ratio far more towards the artists as the primary earners. Even if you can’t make a living, you can make *something* for every single post you make. Your investment of time and effort has some kind of return, even if you’re not in the top 1% of creators. That means earning money as a creator is viable for millions of people that would have otherwise been shouting into the void elsewhere.
Can BitClout actually scale this up? Maybe with sweet, sweet dopamine.
All that earning potential is great. But it’s completely meaningless if you can’t get users to… you know… use your platform.
BitClout faces challenges getting people to trust the system. But that can be overcome with time and a decent PR/marketing push (see section #2 of this edition for more on that). The scam rhetoric will fall away eventually.
What I see as more important than those top-of-funnel incoming users is stickiness… Fortunately, BitClout is sticky as hell. Once you use the app, you continue to come back for more. You get addicted really fast. Anecdotally, this has been true for me and many of the folks I’ve asked about their experience here. It’s hard to verify if it’s true for all users without user-level analytics, but the trajectory of daily active users compared to a rough estimate of new users does seem to imply the stickiness is a BitClout-wide phenomena.
I think the reason for this is very compelling. I would go as far as to say it is BitClout’s secret sauce:
- Social stimuli + financial incentives = lots of dopamine
That’s a hugely powerful phenomena. There is extensive research on the addictive nature of social media and its variable reward schedule. There is also extensive research on the ability of micro-transactions to drive behavior. That little diamond might be worth less than a penny, but its psychological impact is disproportionately large.
I’ve personally found that seeing any kind of financial impact from my work has tricked my brain into thinking that posting is a “productive” use of my time. To some degree it is productive, sure. At least far more productive than posting on traditional social media. If I compare the money earned on BitClout to what I charge per hour of consulting though, it’s negligible. But that’s not really the right comparison. I’m going to be on social media either way. It could be BitClout, which pays me, or Instagram which sells my data and gives me nothing for it. Every 💎earned on BitClout is a 💎I wouldn’t earn otherwise.
Even a small creator that never sees a triple digit investment will earn via diamonds if they post and comment actively. Anything beyond consuming other people’s content is an opportunity to build value. You are rewarded with both social validation and actual $ for posting anything meaningful, regardless of the size of your audience. My hypothesis is that the moment a new user gets hit with their first diamond, they’re going to get a hit of dopamine and a little ah-ha moment. Digital empires have been built on those ah-ha moments.
That’s all cool, but aren’t other people trying the same thing? Why BitClout?
There are other platforms providing similar ah-ha moments as BitClout. Some are doing it really well. But these other platforms core to the burgeoning creator economy are less liquid / accessible. With $clout and BitClout, there’s any number of ways to get exposure, whether in the $clout currency itself, in specific creator coins, or a basket of creator coins like @clout50. Other platforms designed for creators to monetize their content? Not so much.
Want to invest in Substack or Patreon? Good luck getting in on their next funding round via private equity. This isn’t just tactics, either. Considering how easy it is for creators to invest back in BitClout, the relationship between creator and platform becomes much more symbiotic: creators contribute their content as well as their own capital, growing their stake in the platform and fueling its own growth simultaneously.
I’m not an investment professional and this article is not financial advice. BitClout, like any other new business, is not guaranteed to succeed. It has a ton of potential, but potential is all about probabilities, not guarantees. I’m exploring this space because I’m willing to take a risky bet on something that could turn an entire industry on its head. With that goal in mind, BitClout is early enough that someone as small as me can make an impact while being sufficiently established to have proven the underlying functionality is viable. Just because it’s viable doesn’t mean it will scale up and take over the world. Nobody can accurately predict if users will embrace this system and love it as much as our current little group <10,000 daily active users. But I believe it has proven that with mass adoption it could disrupt this entire system. That’s exactly the kind of bet I’m willing to take. Ad astra! 🚀
Alrighty, we’ll let ya get back to your Friday evenings. Everyone get home safe now. We’ll be right back here Sunday night to recap your weekend. Get out there and BUIDL (or take a breather, that’s cool too).
❤️,
@BitsTODAY
