Referring to recent conversations on the matrix chat, I have another idea on how we can increase the usability of blurt and we already have some resources for it. And also find some additional funding for projects.
I mean implementing the possibility of advertising your posts as pinned in exchange for blurt.
We have a json file:
Through the appropriate API key we can modify it with any application. You could create a simple app that allows you to add your link to this file. It could work in such a way that the user posts a link and transfers the appropriate amount of money to blurt for the number of days the ad is to hang. The link goes to the queue. If the link is approved, the blurts for the ad are either burned or go to pay for the streaming server. The number of ad spaces is limited, so if a post does not reach the top within one day, the money can be sent back, or you can implement simple ad boosting, so that whoever gives more, the ad is at the top, on the principle that the rate does not disappear and is not used until it is used up and the post is displayed for an appropriate period of time. You can also add rotation, i.e. every hour the displayed ads change, which will give you a much larger number of posts to display in one day.
If there are no posts, an ad advertising the ad space for user posts will be displayed as a pinned ad.
Of course, the details need to be considered during creation.
Why does it make sense?
Firstly, it is starting to get crowded here, so some people may want to try to stand out with an ad. Secondly, introducing an appreciator makes sense to promote content in the long run. Thirdly, you can also promote your services and products in this way.
Of course, beginnings are never easy, but I think that the very existence of such a function will make some people, even from outside the network, think about joining us and trying to promote their product or service with us, even if they are not bloggers.
Various companies that are looking for ways to promote themselves with cryptocurrencies are looking for spaces like ours where there is a certain pool of users that can be reached and if we advertise it properly, we can attract their attention.
Then we have people in various affiliate programs in various ecosystems. They may see the potential in promoting their affiliate link for blurt because the potential benefits on other chains from acquiring users can bring them additional earnings.
Additionally, each of these people will of course have to pay for creating a promotional post, so they will also burn some tokens.
If we advertise it all nicely and decorate it with e.g. videos on how to advertise on blurt, we will attract attention and consequently increase the purchase of tokens that will either be burned or can be used to finance projects such as paying for the Peertube server.
I encourage all the people who have recently talked about this topic on the chat and people who could create something like that to talk. I know that creating such an application does not take 5 minutes, however, I have too little knowledge about Blockchioan, especially in the field of sending transactions or creating a login system using a blurt account, to do something like that ourselves, but I could support people who want to implement such a project by creating a form, styling it and also advertising in the form of these videos.
I think that we should all care about the development of something like this and in my opinion now is a good time.
I invite people from the matrix chat who recently talked about project financing and maintaining blurt:
@megadrive @saboin @agorise @mariuszkarowski @ctime @logiczombie @yayogerardo @fractalwalrus
...and also the rest of the users to speak up.
Interesting idea and I think it could work. Especially for bloggers/vloggers who have something to "sell" and want to pay to have their product or service displayed prominently.
This could be built as a simple "bolt-on" for existing ui's like beblurt and blurtblog, so it is more decentralised. Then, all ui's in the future can use the bolt-on too, on their own sites and even charge some sort or tiered-pricing for prominence.
There would be no need to build anything since this is already part of Nexus. We just have to add the API calls on the frontends, and possibly modify the code in Nexus if it doesn't already work the way we want it to work.
See my reply to @khrom above for links to the relevant code in the Nexus code base.
I think it could even work better for people from outside. When someone tries to advertise something, they often look for different groups of recipients in different places. We already have quite a large group. If outside capital tried to advertise here on blurt, it would lead to an increase in demand for blurt on the stock exchanges.
Ohhh, at first I thought you meant advertising Blurt around the internet to boost signups.
I feel like most advertising of posts within Blurt would be okay, depending how it's done. There can be corruption in such a mechanism (as with most). And it can unbalance a platform. But it could also be a positive thing. Likely it would be some of each, pros and cons.
I personally don't want to see ads in my Blurt experience. Not from outside companies, not from other bloggers. I would do what I could to hide them, turn them off, ignore them, and/or purposely avoid those advertisers (as I do with many ads I see on TV etc). I feel the best marketing is free market word of mouth, no money or incentives needed. I feel the basic mechanisms of Blurt should be improved to find and promote content people want to see, rather than showing them what they don't want to see (ads) in exchange for money. Basically selling out the user and decreasing their enjoyment/usefulness of the platform, at their own cost. A bit like what shitty governments and corporations already do on a routine basis.
Maybe we have too many new ideas/initiatives starting lately, not enough focus on the good ones and seeing them though. I don't think we need another project right now, and if we did, this probably wouldn't be the #1 priority.
I do thank you for being enthusiastic about Blurt and coming up with various strategies to improve it. 100% upvote and will check back.
Advertising has its good and bad sides. Personally, I don't like it either. However, we need services on blurt that will attract people willing to pay for something because investors can't buy blurts from authors forever. You yourself are an investor and some time ago you were worried about your investments and that the money you invested has now melted away. This is because Blurt is still mostly supported by investors. Advertising is one of those things that can be a source of real income for all authors of witnesses, programmers, etc. A thing that will make the token price go up and the market become deeper. By the way, for those who don't like it, there will probably also be advertising-free frontends where those who support them will not decide to introduce it.
There are many alternatives to maintaining Blurt.
The problem is that none of them are within reach for now. On the other hand, considering what @saboin wrote below, we are basically one step away from introducing ads
Yeah everybody and everything always needs more money, more budget, the ability to do more... yeah I get it. More money is good. Blurt wants money. The fees aren't enough, I understand. Sucking the life out of the currency so it can't ever go up, it's not enough, I understand. We have to take advertising dollars, and probably rules about our content from those now "paying the bills"... oh goodie : P
So what do you propose? Are we going to bake and sell cupcakes? Or maybe you already have some Splinterlands to launch in the next few months? Or maybe a few Bitcoins to spare to buy a listing on Binance or another strong exchange?
This experiment is called web 3 because web 3, due to its decentralizing nature, was supposed to be more resistant to centralization and the effect in which large interest groups and advertisers dictate the terms of social media like we have in web 2. If we introduce advertising and it turns out that advertisers can exert the same pressure on us as in web 2, it will mean that this whole experiment is basically not working :P
Is it possible to avoid such pressures? No! Sooner or later, if not advertisers, then some large companies, exchanges, Justin Suns, or control offices or other SECs may get to us. There will always be pressure and there will always be some shit ;] If we lived in an ideal world where there was no such thing, places like blurt would not be needed because you could write on FB where there would be joyful kumbaya respecting freedom of speech, individual freedom and fair remuneration of authors :P
In life you always have to choose the lesser evil because there is no ideal path. If advertising allows us to financially put our feet more firmly on the ground as Blockchain, then if we use it well, diversify our sources of income by other solutions, then the group will not be able to exert pressure ;]
There is already a mechanism for post promotion built into Nexus.
We can probably just update it and change it to work however we like. It would be easy enough to integrate that system into the frontends since it's just an API call. I haven't studied the code all that much, but the way it works, if I'm not mistaken, is by sending some BLURT to @null with the post's author/permlink in the memo.
You can find the code where it parses payments sent to @null and update the promoted posts here:
https://gitlab.com/blurt/openblurt/nexus/-/blob/main/hive/indexer/payments.py?ref_type=heads
The promoted posts are already part of the
bridge.get_ranked_postsAPI method. You just have to specifypromotedas the sort parameter when calling the method.The code for the
bridge.get_ranked_postsmethod can be seen here:https://gitlab.com/blurt/openblurt/nexus/-/blob/main/hive/server/bridge_api/methods.py?ref_type=heads#L74
I think that burning blurt is not good motivator for FE owner to pin ads. As FE owner usualy earn money based on the website traffic ex. AdSense.
in that case I see that we are closer to such a solution than I thought. only the issue of what @megadrive says on the chat that after 7 days it would automatically expire, in my opinion is bad. If someone pays, their ad should be up for as long as they are willing to pay.
This is an important point. If someone has something that doesnt lose relevancy in a short period of time they should have the ability to advertiser as long as they want.
IMHO it's frontend related so I can imagine some possible ways.
beblurt 5%
blurt.blog 2%
blurt.XYZ 1%
post owner 92%
so you can easly select on which FE your post should be pinned and you can do it for multiple. It sounds good for content creators. But it also means that ads owners are not paying as their posts are not genereting blurts.
there is one additional option which is a mix of those and if post generated enough for beneficiers you will receive chargeback.
And next year:
BeBlurt 7%
blurt.blog 3%
blurt.xyz 1%
blurt.abc 1%
witness lounge upgrade 16%
blurt.meta 4%
slush fund 2%
improvements 6%
staff christmas party 3%
blurt.microsoft 7%
post owner 50%
you dont need to add them. It's only if you want to be pinned. Also it will be great if FEs will support easy way to add that. Because it might be difficult for a user to check where and how much.
I don't like the % system from a post because here you have a situation where your post can earn differently and besides, it defeats the purpose of advertising. We don't want to continue to drain the prize pool for someone else, but to make Blurt, which already exists, circulate and be a real means of payment for services, so that it becomes more desirable on the exchange and also so that it is partially burned in these transactions and, for example, in advertising. In this way, the blockchain will start earning for itself.
People need advertising, that's for sure and they are able to pay for it... and it's really a lot. I know because I myself dealt with advertising for a few clients on FB or Google. However, a person can spend on this the amount of our entire daily turnover on Probit.
This is a real and very desirable service all over the world. There is no point in reinventing the wheel here, just offering them what they are looking for.
Perhaps there should be two methods?
As a simple blogger/content creator, I want to advertise a piece of content I created that is about a current affair.
I only want that post to run for the voting period. So percentage would definitely be more appropriate because typically the content would be irrelevant after that time.
But lets say I'm a big podcaster such as Joe Rogan with a lot of "evergreen" content. Stuff that always stays relevant. I would want to advertise that stuff all the time to get people to come to my site and see the ads from other sponsors and all the other stupid stuff podcasters do now a days.
Which leads into the next problem.
They are posts on a blockchain. Meaning they are permanent. Yet they can only receive rewards for a short period?
If we want people to take Web3 seriously there has to be a way for people to continue getting rewarded for "evergreen content". Content that will always remain relevant and hold value. If the content still holds a value to someone that is willing to pay for it then it should still be rewarded. IMO that is the number two problem that no one ever talks about.
Personally, I absolutely despise advertising in general. But I do see a need for it for individuals to get their products (content) out there. If ads are done respectfully, tasteful and relevant to what is on the page then I am fine with that.
But I dont like having an irrelevant ad for an irrelevant product shoved in my face when I'm trying to consume content.
Secondly, in the way you say you can only promote new posts.
last thing If it is not burdened with the risk of losing blurt then everyone will reach for it and immediately fill the advertising space. No risk no responsibility. And if you pay let's say 100 blurt in advance it means that either you have premises that what you pay for can pay off or you don't do it ;]
Re🤬eD
This is SMART
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