SoMee x CardStarter AMA 2021/04/28
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Participants: The Cat (Aaron Kesel) [BitboyCrypto], Christopher Kramer [SoMee CEO], Phillip Rumple [SoMee CTM], Ashwin Somasundaram [CardStarter Senior Ops Advisor].
The Cat: Okay ill start with an introduction
Chris: Hi everyone thanks for giving us the opportunity to have an AMA here for the CardStarter community. For those who haven’t seen our team deck I’ll post
The Cat: My name is Aaron Kesel I have been in crypto in and out since 2010–2011 when I mined BTC which I later lost due to a hard drive failing. I have also written for a number of online alternative/independent news publications like Activist Post, The Mind Unleashed, Anewspost and more. Long story short, Ben’s favorite words. I currently work with Ben or as you know him Bitboy Crypto as his lead researcher and head admin of the Bitsquad, as well as work helping put promising crypto projects on TV filmed at the NASDAQ with Jane King.
Ashwin: Wow that is very exciting! We have some amazing people joining us today :)
Phillip: And I’m Phillip — I’m the current Cheif Technology Manager for SoMee Social and OneName Global, Inc — I started with this company in June of 2020 after our move to AWS and have been working on streamlining and working on the global presence and distribution for the platform. I’ve over 30 years in the IT and networking community and have been working with blockchain and projects for years :) (i’m old, I know :P)
Ashwin: I prefer wise :)
Phillip: well i mean i’m 41 lol but still haha
Ashwin: Can we have a brief introduction into SoMee?
The Cat: Our team deck
Ashwin: That is an impressive roster
The Cat: Allen Kay basically pioneered the creation of Super Bowl commercials. I will let Chris introduce the project
Ashwin: I had the pleasure of getting to speak with Brad Frank at NASDAQ and it really seems these folks are not for show. They really show up at a moment’s notice 👍
Phillip: SoMee Social is one of the first projects to pioneer the way for decentralized social networking. Our core values are Freedom, Security, and Privacy — what you post is YOURS, and is in your control, 100%.
SoMee also prides it self on Control — since your content is your copyright, you control what you do with it, and how it’s presented. You control your earnings. You control what you do with those earnings. We just give you the VOICE and PLATFORM to be able to say and earn while on social media.
It’s what social media SHOULD be — instead of taking away, controlling what you say, and restricting what you earn, SoMee offers you the VOICE and CONTROL you need in this modern social media world :)
(there’s my hand at eloquence for the day :P)
Ashwin: I love it
Chris: And.. I am Christopher, president and CEO of SoMee. I was fortunate enough to win IBM’s Global Entrepreneurs Award for the SoMee application when we launched. Since then we have won incubation from AWS, filmed on the NASDAQ, NYSE and currently these broadcasts are on Bloomberg, Fox Business and local stations around the nation syndicating about SoMee.
Ashwin: This is VERY impressive. Mainly because of the mainstream adoption potential
The Cat: [In reply to Ashwin]
Brad Frank is super connected and constantly connecting us to celebs and influencers to bring aboard the platform to market SoMee to the masses. But we also have Jamie Gold and his friends/manager/team which helped build the popular online app Draft Kings. So we are stacked when it comes to influencers. We have roughly 100,000+ influencers and micro influencers, we probably have the most well connected marketing team in crypto.
Ashwin: ^some more of the mainstream usecase and potential adoption the space needs.
Phillip: [In reply to Ashwin]
The global reach and appeal for SoMee is definitely one of the best selling points — earning is great, but the reach that SoMee has across the world can compete with the big boys w/o any effort, really :)
Ashwin: People in this space are all about buying these flavor of the month coins but SoMee seems to be a bridge into real world markets and adoption. The only other project I can think of that comes close is brave/BAT (which I know Ben is a fan of for similar reasons).
Phillip: I love brave to be honest, and use it. I get weekly BAT ha — between brave and my browser of choice, it’s all I really use haha
(poor google, they lost muahaha)
The Cat: [In reply to Ashwin]
Ben does love BAT for its use case.
Ashwin: It is obvious to the community the powerhouse of a team, project, POTENTIAL, use case and benefits of SoMee. Now I am going to ask the tough questions 👍
Phillip: *buckles up* let’s do it :P
Chris: Let’s do it!
Ashwin: Everyone wants to know what happened with the first launch and why it will NOT happen again?
Chris: Great question!
The Cat: I’m ready!
Ashwin: …Christopher is typing (the anticipation 😂)
Chris: We initially had many challenges in the development area. Long story short we had an advisor (who will remain unnamed), but who held technical positions at Microsoft and Amazon who referred developers that did not deliver the type of quality code that we expected. They took short cuts, so once we found out about that we did successfully stabilize our application, but decided to rebuild our application for both web and mobile completely with quality code that will scale.
Ashwin: How does the community know it works now and that it will scale?
Are there any third party evaluations?
Chris: We also brought on Phillip who is one of the most talented CTO’s I have ever met. Phillip put in safeguards and 3rd party tools to evaluate our code, which gets an A+
Phillip: Testable, verifiable, secure, and streamlined code is what I ensure the developers do — we do code reviews, code sanity, and security checks on every single push to the repositories, to ensure that all accountability is happening — unlike before, where it was FUNCTIONAL code only, we work on testable agile code development now, with proper reviews.
We use third party tools like Sonar, Codacy, and DeepCode to get better insights into the code, security, and dependencies as well.
Ashwin: THAT is awesome
Phillip: Plus we have moved all development to our single IN HOUSE development team of 14+ developers, QA persons, UI/UX dedicated teams, and project managers — for us, it’s about control on the development front to give us verifiable, testable and secure code.
Ashwin: We have our own internal devs at CARDS will also verify the code as always but we have heard GREAT things
The Cat: Phillip is a super genius who types at 1000+ words a second
Ashwin: I can too! Watch: Djfhdjsjsjdjfndnsjsjdnfnfndnsjdjdnjsjsjs 😂
Phillip: Using AWS we are globally distributed with CloudFront edge locations across all major locations — we are moving to Aurora Global Databases, and EKS cluster nodes throughout the world this year as well. So scale, not really that big of a concern. We also use the same type of technology (React Native) that Facebook pioneered, and that’s what we use for our mobile and web projects as well :)
Ashwin: All of this sounds expensive but worth it. That brings me to my next question
Phillip: Believe it or not, it’s not LOL — the AWS and infrastructure used to be in excess of 20–30k/month. We are well under that now, and having everything using the same type of code base makes management much more simple, and more financially responsible as well.
Ashwin: Wow! That is a deal.
One TOUGH question I have is: why another launch? Why another token? What do you say to inquisitive people that may say this is “just a cash grab”?
The Cat: This is a passion project for many of us sick of BIG social censorship, for instance Jason Appleton (Crypto Crow) joined our team without any tokens offered to him same as Ben even though we are friends and I work with him. Many people on this project see what we are doing and want to get involved. But I’ll let Chris expand on those thoughts.
Phillip: Chris can field the other two questions, but as to the launch, it was necessary from a technical standpoint as well. With the latest updates in ERC, as well as the addition of Cardano and other side chains, plus the new code base, another entirely new launch was necessary.
Chris will speak more to the tokenomics and why it’s not a cash grab.
Chris: Well in 2017 when we launched the ONG token we raised about $1.3M and that carried us all the way to now. That’s not a lot of money, but we stretched those funds to last us through “crypto winter” when a lot of projects that our raised us 50 to 1 went bust, we managed funds very wisely to get here, but if you actually look at our ecosystem design that is the answer to why we have multiple tokens. SoMee was originally a fork of the STEEM blockchain with our own assets, SoMee Points, GFuel and GBucks, so we are now ready with a new system and decided to replace GBucks with SAT (SoMee Advertising Token) which makes more sense and allows us to get much needed capital to actually launch a site now that can scale millions of users.
Ashwin: [In reply to The Cat]
YES…This is what I LOVE to hear. THAT is the spirit of blockchain, CARDS, ADA and the story for most of us in this community 👍👌
Chris: And… We also cannot continue on the STEEM blockchain. It was another point of failure for us and does not scale. So once we evaluated Cardano we knew that we could achieve vertical and horizontal scale that we need, so the funds that we make now will help us achieve quite a technical integration and build out onto Cardano
Ashwin: For those that were not in the space then, $1.3 mill in 2017 is a joke. In 2017, literal scams and vaporware got tens of millions of dollars. The equivalent now would be a company with the top mainstream and crypto influencers raising for 100k…
Phillip: In many ways STEEM was a great first choice for social media, but the limitations of the network, as well as requirements made it….practically impossible for global scale. So yeah, that was a wake up call for many projects, not just SoMee ;)
Ashwin: THIS is the key. STEEM was the wrong choice all along. SoMee works and was made for Cardano.
Phillip: Facebook suffered the same types of set backs that STEEM offers in the networking field — while Libra was nice and all, they didn’t have the protocols and interfaces in place to be able to do social media AND monetization, it just didn’t scale.
The Cat: It’s also important to note that we have live products and will soon have a new public open beta the same day as the IDO on Cards, May 3rd.
Ashwin: That is one of the few reasons CARDS saw a fit. This is a project that could thrive if only it was on Cardano
Phillip: That’s where we came in and basically said, let’s do this from the ground up, figure out the hurdles and move to the technologies that can do it, ya know?
Ashwin: Can our community be a part of the demo?
The Cat: Whereas former devs botched the social media site. We also built a social media manager which is top notch (Twitter Link)
Phillip: The open beta launches 5/3/2021 open to the entire world to join :)
Chris: The site will have all feature integrations by May/June 2021 photos, short clips videos and streams that once combined with DeFi, NFT, Ad-Share, and Content Monetization on Cardano will be (We believe) the “killer app” for the blockchain
Ashwin: 👍🙏
The Cat: Leveraging Cardano also allows us to have cheap fees
Phillip: And, let’s not forget @ChristopherKramer as well, once we do the MVP launch with the main functionalities in place, we’ll be adding all the other side chain options, new DEFI, and other options, projects, and integrations into the system on a routine basis.
Ashwin: [In reply to Chris]
That sounds awesome. If Somee delivers even 10% of that then we are talking about massive potential.
The Cat: ETH gas fees are ugly
Ashwin: Ok guys
Phillip: *senses another tough question*
The Cat: [In reply to Chris]
Paypal’s CEO recently discussed superapps coming and I beleive SoMee will be one. 😉
Ashwin: I have been rough on you and worse when I screened you 😅 but I love the drive and potential and I think the community will also.
Let us see what questions they have :)
Best questions will be rewarded but we will open this up in a little bit :)
The Cat: Well deliver 100% and speed up development with the help of CardStarter and being a CAP advisory member.
Ashwin: YES. We push our projects but only because we believe in them so much :)
The Cat: Hmmmm maybe we can throw something in the pot too?
Ashwin: I love it
UC: Questions should be open now :)
Pablo: Great AMA, thank you for your time! Would love to know… How does your solution compare to other projects such as uptrend? And why do you think you may succeed where other are failing?
The Cat: [In reply to Pablo]
Uptrend isn’t built on a blockchain from the last I saw it, only their rewards are on the blockchain. We are building the decentralized social media protocols. Plus we have all the marketing power, again we have 100,000+ influencers, and micro influencers and that’s not including the celebs.
Phillip: some good questions there
[PLANETSTAKE]: Will you be able to add special social groups, like special rooms people can go to chat together via video… a bit like a Zoom functionality?
Phillip: Group Video, Group Conferences, Live Video Streams, and Live Video Snaps are all possible on SoMee here with the next major update in May :)
[PLANETSTAKE]: Will you be adding a special Crypto section to the APP… Somee’s version of Crypto Twitter if you will…. so this will help onboard million so Crypto fans if for example upcoming and important crypto news gets released there quite quickly…
The Cat: [In reply to [PLANETSTAKE]]
There’s a portfolio built into the app. Can we share a video/images of the app? Ashwin?
Ashwin: You should👍
[PLANETSTAKE]: And most importantly, will all video data be end to end crypto encrypted making it publically accessible to all but impossible to hack ?
Phillip: [In reply to [PLANETSTAKE]]
All video is hosted on encrypted end to end connections through the infrastructure, yes.
Mus: Can we stake now ONG token to farm SAT ? What are the other benefits ? Thx
The Cat: When the yield farming contract is up farming SAT will be available.
KH: We recently saw a open platform (parlor) get in heat and essentially shut down for allowing racist hate speech to flow openly. what can be learned form this to make sure your open platform does not run into the same issue. and what steps will be taken to prevent this from breeding within your ecosystem
Chris: [In reply to KH]Well we implemented technology that will allow SoMee to plug in multiple networks and never rely on one single network such as AWS, which Parlor used exclusively. Aside from that what Parlor did wrong was ignore the requests from the host provider when there was legitimate DMCA or other legal requests that all “operators” are obligated to respond to. After multiple requests they got shut down. SoMee always responds to requests, but also will eventually be fully decentralized and immutable but that part will take time.
M S: Have you partnered with Cardano on bridging to mainnet? Or project catalyst? when will those talks begin?
The Cat: [In reply to M S]
We have talked to Charles directly and the Cardano Foundation, we also have a proposal in Fund 5.
[PLANETSTAKE]: Will you be able to add special social groups, like special rooms people can go to chat together via video… a bit like a Zoom functionality?
Phillip: [In reply to [PLANETSTAKE]]
SoMee Is crypto enabled — ergo, any post you do, be it in groups, on your post timeline, anywhere, can be earning points for you — no special groups needed.
Ashwin: Muted :) Feel free to answer away 😊👍
Dave: What is the utility of somee tokens when using the app?
The Cat: [In reply to Dave]The utility of onG is staking for SAT (SoMee Ad Share Token) the more SAT you stack or accumulate the more ad share revenue you will make which is rewarded in SoMee Points and able to be cashed out thru Skrill or with a Debit card.
Mr. D: Great AMA! In one sentence, how should I convince my parents and uncles to use Somee?
Chris: [In reply to Mr. D]
Grannie I can’t believe it I earned $ just posting a link on SoMee. You have to try it!
Mus: When exactly will have the opportunity to use the app and you have some kind of rewards for early adopters ?
Chris: [In reply to Mus]
People earn for content and likes as seen at the post level.
+ they can choose to participate in the Ad-Share and earn from ads if they want
The Cat: [In reply to Mus]
You’ll be able to use the app on May 3rd without video features, and blockchain. By June/July well have the blockchain integrated.
Phillip: Someone Asked: Can you highlight some of the issues in traditional social media platforms and how you plan to address them? Take example of FB & Youtube.
- Traditional platforms are centralized platforms that stop people from doing things in a centralized way; they control the information, control the posts, contents, what you can do, what you can say, how it’s used, and have unilateral control. SoMee is different — we offer the ability to have control at the user level — you control your content, you control your posts, and you control what you do on the platform. We also are introducing social governance in the future as well, to allow the community, as a general to influence where the platform goes, and what it does. SoMee is also one of the first to pioneer the concept of decentralized, monetized social media — we’ll be introducing social content moderation, as well — to include social news and publishing as well. All of these things are designed to combat issues that Parlor and other platforms have, while still being fair to the community as a whole.
Combating hate speech, and other things are done with the new social moderation features that we are building for decentralized social media — allowing the community to vett, vote and verify information being put on the platform — as well as allowing YOU the user to hide whatever you don’t wish to see.
so many questions ha, hard to keep up with it
Shubham Arora: How do you plan to address issues like hate speech, Fake news etc. which a social media platform need to address as per local laws in each country?
Chris: [In reply to Shubham Arora]
Well we will respond as we have been to any complaints but we have plans for content scoring that give people the choice to still see a piece of content but filter it according to a “gravity” algorithm. We as operators don’t want to be the arbiters of truth so want to give the choice to each person to see pieces of content that get negative gravity (most likely fake news) or to adjust it so they can evaluate themselves.
Phillip: [In reply to Chris]
that’s the primary key of decentralized social moderation that we are introducing — the platform shoudn’t ever be the point of truth or control — that’s up to the community as a whole. After all, you are responsible for what you say, and that should extend online too.
Arne: What are the things that you are proud of the most gentlemen. And what are the things that you think could have been better/different.
Chris: [In reply to Arne]
For myself I am proud that I never gave up and even in extremely difficult moments during building SoMee I continued to find solutions and kept going. I do wish I would have hired Phillip and the development team that we have now from the beginning, but who knows maybe we had to go through all of these other difficulties to teach us something that can benefit us well into the future.
The Cat: [In reply to Arne]
I am proud that we have managed to turn this project around after being taking advantage of when all we wanted to do was build solutions for people. I am also thankful that all my friends in crypto have been understanding and have pledged to help push SoMee.
Phillip: I can agree with that Chris — i think you had to go through this, learn the lessons of social media and blockchain early, and then get the experts to help where needed. I’m most proud that we were able to scale SoMee the way we have, move it to a global platform, and make it open enough for me to work on secondary cloud platforms like Azure and Google to bridge the gap and account for outages. I love this platform, and want it to succeed, so i’m constantly coming up with ways to tweak the system, work on new protocols and methods, in order to keep it accessible, online and reachable for everyone.
James: When’s the registration begin ?
Chris: [In reply to James] Today at 8pm PST I believe
Phillip: ask asked by MusMine: Do you have an SDK or API for developer and startups that want to integrate with your network ?
We are actually working on an open SDK and node configuration to allow for decentralized links to our platform; and custom integrations with SoMee are also possible with our own custom built codes, as well. We don’t have an SDK yet that we can release, but it is in the pipeline, or focus right now is on the redesign.
Any other project that wishes to integrate with us (there are many already doing so), can reach us at business@somee.social and we’d be more than happy to discuss how to go about doing just that :)
Ashwin: Wow
Phillip: *looks around* did we answer it all? Lol
Ashwin: This has been exciting, inspiring, informative and I am glad we got to have this AMA
I have really enjoyed having this direct interaction between the community and the projects. It really should make our community feel like they have a say in what is being built as in line with the ethos of blockchain technology!
Phillip: indeed, was fun :)
The Cat: Thanks for having us Ashwin and we are excited to integrate CardStarter into SoMee and look forward to a very prosperous relationship going forward.
More people in this space need to work together instead of the tribalism.
Arne: Thanks guys for being here! And to take your precious time to stand in front of our humble community!
[PLANETSTAKE]:
I think a KILLER addition to this social APP would be something never done before… making it a hybrid of 2 great ideas… So you remember Tamagotchi and more recently the CryptoKitties craze…. it would be great to add a crypto animals functionality to the APP where users can earn points etc to buy animals, grow their animals and mate their animals as NFTs which they can then sell to others at some later date if they so wish…. so for example posting a video which gets 100 likes earns 100 animal points which can be spent in any way for your NFT animals which you are raising…. and then for example you can have it so that your crypto kitty sometimes interrupts you whilst on social media, coming right up to the screen with their paws and purring before going away… like a more interactive and interesting social media than Facebook has ever managed to be… but don;t limit it to just cats… have dogs and rabbits and monkeys etc etc too… am sure there are plenty of creatives who can create the artwork if there is an incentivization mechanism built into the APP making it worthwhile for them to do that.
Phillip: [In reply to [PLANETSTAKE]]
hehehe this is a great idea, and one of the main utilities of how SoMee has built it’s platform. Something like this is VERY possible for us to integrate in the future :)
Ashwin: THANK YOU all for being here and thanks to all our community members for participating! I am really excited for this launch and more importantly of TAKING DOWN TRADITIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA
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About SoMee
SoMee.Social is a blockchain-powered dashboard that allows users to interact with all their social media profiles on various platforms from a single interface. The SoMee.Social platform intends to enable users to exercise complete control over their online identities by serving as a bridge to all centralized social media platforms. The SoMee.Social platform is developed by SoMee Global Inc.
