We at Bitcoinist have built up a good relationship with the team behind the Gems social messenger app. We ran into them while we were attending various conferences. The Gems team is fun, intelligent, friendly and are always glad to answer any questions. So drop a line and say hi to the developers on social media. We were also very happy that Daniel Peled made some time for us in his busy schedule to do an interview with us.
Serge: Some people have heard about Gems but a lot of the readers out there haven’t yet. Can you tell us a little bit about Gems? Is Gems another Altcoin?
Daniel Peled: Gems is not another altcoin. Gems is a Social Messenger integrated with Bitcoin 2.0 technology. You can compare Gems is a Whatsapp type of phone messenger. However Gems is the “grown-up” version of Whatsapp with means secure and private encrypted messaging. Gems offers users rewards in Gems for inviting their friends. Gems will also be given if the users contribute to the network. Gems is designed in such a way that its main purpose is to help introduce cryptocurrency to the average person, and this in a fun and easy to understand way. Our new promotional video is now live and can help explain Gems and you can see how it actually works.
Serge: You made the comparison with Whatsapp. Why would users switch from Whatsapp to Gems? What makes Gems special?
Daniel Peled: Many people are aware of the security issues with Whatsapp. Security breaches, hacks, leaked information or photos and other things have haunted Whatsapp from the beginning. The reason why Whatsapp is having so many issues is that it’s not using encrypted messaging. This means that the services provided by Whatsapp are not private.
Furthermore Whatsapp was just bought up by Facebook for around $19 billion. Regardless of the security hiccups and serious questions about privacy, Whatsapp has become an extremely valuable service for their users. Also Whatsapp charges users $1 per year for the use of their app. It is also rumoured that Whatsapp is storing users data, like conversations and things like that. Nevertheless these are just rumours but if they are true, we are concerned about it.
I will not go into detail on the exact how and when Gems came to be. Suffice to say that we looked at Whatsapp and thought: we can build something much better. It is much better than Whatsapp because of the following reasons.
Gems is free and will not ask for a subscribers fee ever. We at Gems will never store your data and we will not have access your private messages. Furthermore we approached the whole advertising theme in an original way. If any advertiser who wants to contact users or want to put some ads in that certain users like to see, the advertisers will need to purchase Gems in order to do so. This creates a market where users can profit from their Gems. Users also have the ability to say no ads. This is really bringing the power back to the users who make the network strong.
In recent days we also noticed more and more interest in our platform. It was quite high from the beginning but still it gives gratification that all our hard work, ideas and creations are appreciated by the community. Clearly we are doing things right since our followers and people that want to use our app is rising on a daily basis.
We at Bitcoinist like to thank Daniel Peled for having this quick interview with us. We really appreciate it that he found the time in his very busy schedule to do this interview.
What do you think about the Gems social messenger? Let us know in the comments below!