Busy: Your next-gen social network platform based on the Steem Blockchain

liondani 8 years ago

Embedding all famous types of digital content (Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Twitch, Twitter, SteemQ, etc.)

Will we be able to upload pictures instantly from the platform when submitting new posts without the need to host them in third party’s hosting websites first?

0.00 BPC

snowflake 8 years ago (edited)

This is the kind of site that could bring steem into the spotlight. I've been saying this from the start the only way you gonna takeover giants like facebook,youtube and amazon is if you integrate everything in the same site. ( wechat already proved that it works and that its the future) The more an environement is interactive ( chat, marketplace,video,live streaming,video calls,games,etc..) the more users you will retain on your site and the bigger the network effect. The only thing that prevented us from creating a real active economy online was the missing piece which was money. Now we have it so we can build some really great innovation and create completely new type of interaction online. The more diversity in a site the better, that's why I think busy should even integrate with a video platform like steemQ or just embed a video uploader and add a video section to users's profil , I wrote my first post on steemit about this https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/steem-vision-short-introduction
Imagine 2 strangers who just met in a sport chat room both watching a live stream football game and deciding to make a little bet just for fun and then at the end of the match they can pay each other instantly, this is just the kind of interaction that weren't possible before online but that you can now do on the same site seamlessly
I have a few questions
Is the marketplace's escrow going to be trustless or will you guys hold people's fund?
Why the name busy? It sounds pretty modern, i like it actually.
Will communication be encrypted?
Is UI going to look similar or is this just a demo design?
Is the amount of dollar earned going to be displayed under each post? if yes I suggest you don't display it, as it creates a money grab kinda mentality, it also creates a lot frustration and jealousy for users who can't earn anything. Busy shouldn't primarily advertises itself as a money maker but should instead play the all in one site card and payouts as a bonus.( high expectations often leads to disapointment and users leaving the platform)If users come to the platform with no expectations and realize that they can get paid for posting they are much more likely to stick around.
Anyway from what I read I think you guys really get the vision and the importance to have everything on the same website.

0.00 BPC

7 votes

ekitcho 8 years ago (edited)

Glad you like it ! You totally get our vision for sure. And of course we want a platform that integrates SteemQ, SteemStays, Steemwhales, Steemdb, SteemUber, SteemGames, all types of apps to build a rich and interactive environnement where you want to stay.

for your questions :

The Escrow is a Steem blockchain enhancement, actually there since 20th September (Steem 0.14.2)
In Busy, you have "us", and "by", this platform is build by Us, and everyone should be busy using busy platform, since we want it to be a all-in-one platform with killer Apps. But it's mainly because its modern, easy to remember
The private chat will be encrypted, offchain. We're working on it. Still waiting for private message on the Steem blockchain. It's been there for a while but still not working
It's not a demo design, we are in closed Alpha, we will start the open Beta with this design, and improve it with some good UI/UX design, and re-branding, new marketing after Q1
Yes it will be displayed, but we adopt another approach, and showing only the author reward, then you can see all the details. I understand your point of view about frustration and how it can create bad competition, ve been thinking about that too, but hiding it is not on the scope for now. We will have some Polls later submitted to the community to decide new changes like this one

Thanks for your support

0.00 BPC

5 votes

snowflake 8 years ago (edited)

Wow so nice to hear that you guys are b us y working towards that goal :-) It will definetely be a winner, I have no doubt about that. Most of the sites you mentionned would stand very little chance on their own to rival big players but when integrated within busy (as the core platform) they will all benefit greatly from the existing userbase, it can only snowball from there, more apps, more value,more users,etc..
I have a few suggestion if I may..
The letter B and Y in busy could be in a different color than the U and S so that people get the message more easily.
Also regarding author rewards, you could display the amount more precisely like $0.001 or even $0.0001 so that even people with little influence can see the counter move up when they upvote. ( psychologicaly this is very important to motivate people to want more power)
Anyway keep it up guys..very good work so far, I ll be following this project closely.

0.00 BPC

ekitcho 8 years ago (edited)

Thank you !

The letter B and Y in busy could be in a different color than the U and S so that people get the message more easily.

We've been and are still thinking about that. We may keep it like more disguised, and known by some ppl, or to-be-discovered (When you ask yourself why Busy ? like you did), than something really obvious playing with the logo letters/colors etc. (something i'm not real fan of..)

Also regarding author rewards, you could display the amount more precisely like $0.001 or even $0.0001 so that even people with little influence can see the counter move up when they upvote.

Our solution will cover this issue. When you vote on a post you will have a small animation showing exactly the added amount to the payout you just made, also you'll be able to click and view all details, the same way you can see it on steemstats, or steemd

thanks for your kind suggestions

0.00 BPC

snowflake 8 years ago (edited)

Hello ekitcho,

There is 2 more things I wanted to suggest for busy :) I'm really excited by the potential of this site because you guys have the vision and are thinking big, which tells me this thing is gonna be yuuuge !
Anyway here are my suggestions.

You could use @radiosteem or something similar to allow people to pay to get their song heard by all the busy users. This is something people have always liked, when they think a song is good they want the world to hear it, people could even burn some steem just to get their song heard live by everyone, you could add a steem music player on the interface or something.

The second suggestion is to create a free daily lottery. So that busy can make someone's day everyday, this is very good for user retention, the hope that you can win the busy lottery one day will keep people coming back everyday and also because its free.
It is pretty simple to do basically you need to allocate a unique number to each user using busy. Then these users can just cast their vote for the lottery on the interface so everyday the amount will be different. And finally you need to make the rules clear , basically you can use first or last random hash numbers of a certain block and when this number correspond to the user's unique number he wins. It sounds a bit complexe but It really isn't.
here are some lottery project based on the blockchain https://github.com/ghgr/LottoMotto-Bitcoin https://github.com/EarthLottery/EarthLottery https://github.com/hmel/bitcoin-raffle

A free daily lottery will have everyone coming back , no users will leave for good :)

Let me know what you think

0.00 BPC

thecryptofiend 8 years ago

This is exciting. Will busy be using the same voting model as Steemit - i.e. based on SP? Will we need a separate wallet to use it?

0.00 BPC

2 votes

samupaha 8 years ago

Great to see other projects to be build on the Steem blockchain!

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

Internationalization: More important than the language for UI is language for posts. The blockchain allows that the language is marked in the metadata, but AFAIK there is no standard for it. Please do it so that other UIs can use the same method. It would suck really bad if UIs wouldn't have the same way of telling the language of the post. Because Busy is probably the first UI to implement internationalization, you have kinda responsibility to also think a little bit how to make a standard that everybody can use in the future. ISO 639-3 contains all natural languages, so it's very good tool for this purpose.
Favorite categories is really important feature. We need to let users to subscribe to tags and not only to other users. It's necessary tool to help building better communities. Following famous writers doesn't create communities but following a tag will create.
Remittance business is not going to be easy. Biggest problem is how people can send currency that they have and let the receiver get currency they can use in their country. Steem doesn't solve that problem. I'd suggest you will forget the whole remittance market unless you have some serious business partners who have experience with that business.
The message is quite vague. Too much buzzwords, kind of hard to understand what you are really doing here. I know you are legit, but I've seen so many overhyped projects that I'm little bit allergic to them. Don't be surprised if some other people won't take you seriously. Start with why, don't focus on explaining how cool the tech is that you are using.

0.00 BPC

ekitcho 8 years ago (edited)

Hi samupaha thank you for your thoughts, here some quick answers

Internationalization, we are working on it of course. For now we have language detection on post + displaying country Flag, but adding the ability to define post language is on our roadmap
Favorite tags/categories is already listed on this post and on our roadmap ;)
Remittance business is more of a final goal, but i can assure you i have some great acquaintances in this niche.. and we have plans to work on this.
Thanks for this suggestion i do understand why you're allergic to them but you're not the targetted user, you're already in the cryptocurrency space. The message is vague because the project is huge but i think its pretty clear that our first step is the Social media/network part, Also you should consider that this presentation is specifically written for this Steemit community, and now our final /mainstream presentation that will not focus on the tech at all.
The main message behind this post is to show all the possibilities in a All-in-one Platform, embedding different types of Apps that anyone could build on top of Busy. To inform the community (dev/designers/marketers/etc.), that they can count on the Busy platform to bootstrap their app into a unique platform instead of having several interface/domains, we can work together under the Busy umbrella and this project belongs to the community, build by Us, for Us.

May i suggest you check WeChat video

I will not be surprised if some people won't take us seriously. I don't see it as a problem. We need people who believe in the vision and what we're building there. Let the facts speak for themselve, once the app is released. there are a lot of people in the world who dont take Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies seriously, in fact the majority. Still, we are there to work on this scene, and don't care about what these people think. (Same with people thinking Steem is a ponzi/pyramid scheme..)

0.00 BPC

nextgen622 8 years ago

This is fantastic guys! Really looking forward to trying it out.

Just a quick question. To enable remittance and marketplace functionality, will you be integrating an option to convert fiat to steem/SBD and to buy steem using credit cards etc.?

0.00 BPC

ekitcho 8 years ago

That's in the final scope for sure, part of the mission to make is scalable. You can also consider it as a "third part" App that can be integrated on the Busy platform. We are discussing with @bitspace with their bitgate project (decentralized exchange based on Bitshares/Graphene, that can allow fiat to crypto conversion/trading), i'm also in contact with a company in HK that may help us to manage credit card payment as well as offering a Steem Debit Card product to our users. This is probably not gonna happen before the end of 2017 though

0.00 BPC

sbi-booster 5 years ago

Please fix your price feed.

0.00 BPC

5 votes

jrcornel 8 years ago

This looks awesome! I am curious though... how will this not be competing with Steemit? I get that they are built on the same blockchain and will use the same currency... but if one person is using busy.org won't they not be using Steemit.com? Thanks in advance!

0.00 BPC

ekitcho 8 years ago (edited)

I think some people might switch from Steemit to Busy, but that's not our goal. I think both interface can have a great future on this blockchain. Steemit is more a Reddit/Medium for now, and want to reward and incentivize good articles, for writers, bloggers, also artists. I can't talk for Steemit.com and don't know their long term vision/roadmap for this specific interface but with Busy we want to bootstrap Steem to new users, even people who are not bloggers, allowing them to share all different type of content, from Gamer streaming to any content they'd share on a social media like Facebook, Twitch, or other online platforms. They will be able to use their rewards on some Busy Apps like a marketplace for good / services all in one platform. I dont see competition since we both work (together) for the success of the Steem blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Thanks for your support

0.00 BPC