Social media platforms like Youtube and Facebook have come under fire due to a variety of problems. However, traditional consumers have found it hard to move to new platforms due to the lack of variety and healthy competition in the industry.
Over the past week, Facebook has begun losing some of its death grip over the social media industry. The Cambridge Analytica data scandal affected over 50 million Facebook users from all across the world and caused the Facebook stock price to drop by over 10%, resulting in an almost $50 Billion drop in market valuation.
Rightfully, many Facebook users announced their distaste for Facebook’s release of consumer data. Some users even pledged to delete their Facebook accounts in an attempt to get revenge on the company that released their data in such an unprofessional manner. Although it is currently unclear what effect the data scandal had on the Facebook user base, it would be safe to say that consumer trust in Facebook has hit all-time lows.
Additionally, with recent scandals involving Youtubers and advertisers alike, many creators on the Youtube platform have found it hard to maintain a stable living income while working on the platform.
This has resulted in many Youtube creators having to seek other ventures in order to make money to maintain their living standards.
Along with these problems comes another issue that hits close to home for the cryptocurrency community. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have banned all ads relating to cryptocurrencies – ICOs in particular – in an attempt to distance themselves from legal liability.
This censorship along with other scandals involving large social media companies today has created an environment where users are actively looking for new social media alternatives.
However, in a world so dominated by key players today, these users and creators alike have not found many places to turn to.
So What Social Media Alternatives Are There?
Newly founded social media options, Steemit and DTube, both offer the appeal of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology along with a new way in which creators and users can interact with social platforms.
Steemit uses an upvote system along with their naive cryptocurrency, Steem, to pay creators. For example, if there was a post that you liked, whether it be a video, picture or text, you can use the Steem which you have and give it to the creator by simply upvoting the post.
However, like other social media platforms, Steem has struggled with problems such as vote corruption and bots which pushes posts artificially to the front pages of the platform. An underground market has formed with malicious users with ulterior motives using bots to boost their pages in an artificial manner.
However, Steem is still in its beta phase and hopes to fix all of the problems seen in the background on release.
Like Reddit, Steem has a variety of subreddits for a vast array of topics. Consumers have picked up on the appeal of this platform, with many users creating a career of their own on the platform with some popular posts generating hundreds of dollars worth of Steem for creators.
The Steem Whitepaper states:
Steem is an experiment designed to address challenges in the cryptocurrency and social media industries by combining the best aspects from both. Steem presents earning opportunities to content creators and internet readers in ways that have not existed within the social media industry.
Steem has, well, picked up a lot of steam recently, generating over 1 million user registrations over the course of its short 2-year history. As well, Steem currently services over 50,000 users every day. This number may seem nominal in comparison to the scale of social media today but, considering the short history of the site, it has been touted as quite an accomplishment.
Steemit allows for a new wave of content creators who previously faced obstacles preventing them from monetizing their content. Anyone, no matter what background they come from, can have access to the platform and can get paid for the content they upload.
YouTube and Facebook are losing content creators to #steemit and #dtube
Join the cool kids, get paid, and avoid censorship!https://t.co/liME9RkYaQ via @BW— Sharon French (@FitinfunSharon) April 13, 2018
Youtube, Meet Dtube!
Another great alternative to classic social media platforms is DTube. DTube is another blockchain based SM platform which hopes to break ground on the empire Youtube has built up. Dtube is actually based on the Steemit platform and uses the Steem blockchain as a method of storing information and as a way to reliably run the platform.
Visually, DTube looks very similar to YouTube. However, you may notice is that instead of view counts displayed under video thumbnails that dollar amounts are displayed.
This is what makes this content sharing platform so innovative, and allows for it to be disruptive in the current social media landscape. Like Steemit, users only need to pay for content which they find appealing and can adjust how much they want to contribute to the creator. This forces DTube creators to up their content quality in an attempt to gain the appeal of those watching the videos. Dtube has continually proven itself to be an up and coming competitor to traditional video streaming sites.
Dan Novaes, the CEO of Current, a newly founded blockchain based video streaming service says:
With blockchain, people will finally have the chance to be rewarded for their time, attention, and data. No longer will their valuable data be controlled by a few giant companies.
These new blockchain based platforms have continually proven themselves to be upcoming contenders in the social media game. However, many of these platforms are still in their beta phases and have yet to see wide-scale adoption. Despite this, it does not take away from the fact that these sites are set to become strong players in the social media industry.
Do you think that these platforms will be able to disrupt the big market players seen today? Tell us in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Pixabay, Shutterstock
The Rundown
