BitClout revisited
Also: Another wave of audio products, "Can't Unsee" and the Rainbow ETH wallet
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Catches of the week 🐟
Social and enterprise audio communication “wars”
News broke last week that Microsoft is looking to acquire popular chat and communications platform Discord for roughly $10 billion. For those of you unfamiliar with Discord, it is basically a social chat platform, where you can hang out and talk to other members of smaller communities that are built around specific interests (e.g. a particular game, a product, or a celebrity).
Now, why is this interesting? First of all, this serves as another puzzle piece in the future landscape of enterprise communication (which I will do a deep-dive on in a few days 😎), and second, it triggered very interesting announcements in reaction to this move.
So what happened? By acquiring Discord, Microsoft is basically adding a whole new layer of audio communication to its product suite. Yes, today Discord is primarily used as a social chat platform, but I have seen more and more companies using Discord as their primary communication platform recently.
This is putting Slack, which was acquired by Salesforce last year, under pressure, as they are in direct competition with the Microsoft product. And it did not take long for Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield to launch a counter-attack. During a Clubhouse talk this week he announced that Slack is integrating its own version of Clubhouse into the product, allowing teams to communicate via audio in a more flexible way.
Oh by the way - he did this while the CEO of Clubhouse was also a speaker in the same room 😂
Looking at the social layer of audio communication another player made a huge move this week. Spotify (which I featured last week) announced to acquire popular sports audio app Locker Room and that it is aiming to extend the focus of the product beyond sports, building a product that allows creators to connect with fans in real-time via audio.
Two or three weeks ago I made the prediction that social audio will become a commodity and so far it feels like this is the direction we are heading with Twitter, Facebook, and Spotify all launching their own products and enterprise players like Microsoft or Slack integrating audio communication even deeper into their offering.
macOS x Gmail 💌
Gmail has become the de facto standard email client for many of us. Accessing multiple Gmail accounts in your browser is still somewhat painful and some people simply prefer to use a native email client on their device.
Check out mimestream, if you are an Apple user! They have built a slick mail client for macOS, specifically for Gmail users, and thus combine the best of both worlds.
Can’t Unsee
I came across Can’t Unsee a few weeks ago and really love the idea. It is a simple web interface that allows you to play a little game by comparing two design options you are presented with and choosing the better-suited one. If you guess correctly, you collect points and move on to the next design.
It is a simple, yet a great way for users to challenge their design skills. I reached out to the creator of Can’t Unsee because I think this could serve as a great interface for crowdsourcing design decision-making in companies.
Let’s say you are not sure how to design a certain feature. You would simply upload the two options and have designers vote on which version they prefer. The ones choosing the solution you end up using get some reward (community karma points or a small payout). The ultimate goal is to become so reputable as a platform, that designers include their score on Can’t Unsee on their application for new jobs.
What do you think?
Rainbow ETH wallet 🌈
As a long time ethereum user and supporter, I have witnessed the development of interfaces to access the ethereum blockchain over the years.
When I received my first ETH in the summer of 2015, you needed to run a full node on your local device and could interact with the ethereum blockchain using your terminal. Not soo user friendly 😋
However, I have seen a development of better and better user interfaces over the years and the Rainbow wallet marks the latest of those steps. It is simply the best product I have used so far to manage my ETH and Altcoin holdings and to interact with the ETH blockchain.
So check it out if you are a crypto geek like me!
Meme of the week 🖼
Really enjoyed this one by Trung Phan (who has a killer Meme game on Twitter)! It reflects the current zeitgeist in how Gen-Zs are approach investing.
By the way - I read this article on what is fueling the recent trend around active trading, especially among younger traders. Very good read, that I enjoyed a lot!
Trade of the week 😎
I bought my own coin on BitClout! I decided to check out BitClout and, of course, had to buy a small amount of my own coin. Not sure if I will ever be able to withdraw the money from BitClout (see the extensive discussion below) but I was just too curious and had to give it a try 😅
Enjoying the read so far? Let others have a piece of it too! Share this newsletter and help me spread the word 🙌
Podcast recommendation 🎧
Just want to share this as I really enjoyed the conversation between Tim Ferriss and Balaji Srinivansan. It is a long conversation (~3h if you skip Tim’s ads) but I took a lot away from it. Here is the apple podcast link!
BitClout - controversial crypto social network (revisited)
So I wrote about the launch of BitClout in last week’s newsletter and really want to deep-dive here since I gave the platform a try and am still undecided whether it is a total scam or a genius idea (my current feeling is 60/40).
So let’s start on why this is such an interesting concept and probably a genius idea. See this thread by Andrew Wilkinson on why creating a market for betting on individual people is so interesting.
I totally agree with Andrew that the concept is amazing (and lots of fun) as it can align incentives between a creator and the community. I have come across many comments and posts over the past days where people state that they always wanted to invest in their favorite Youtuber or Twitch streamer and really embrace the concept of BitClout.
Now, there are lots and lots of people saying that BitClout is a huge scam, a Ponzi scheme and that everyone will lose their money. I believe that there are some valid points behind these acquisitions and would like to point you to this thread which highlights some of the wild things that the creators of the platform have been doing.
What I like about these types of new platforms is that there is a huge potential if you are an early adopter and right about the future growth. Nevertheless, there is a substantial risk that this thing will not work and you lose 100% of your investments. I like to take these kinds of asymmetric risks but would not urge anyone to invest in BitClout at the moment. You can still make your bet once they allow for cash withdrawals 😉
You can also participate in the hype without investing by building cool products around the platform. Every BitClout transaction is publicly available on their blockchain, so why not build the next Coinmarketcap based on their data? Some use cases I see:
Build a bot that automatically sends out push notifications once a user Tweets that he or she joined BitClout officially (you need to do that in order to claim your account)
Build a better version of bitcloutpulse.com
Build a way to follow the trades of others and replicate them
Lots of opportunities 🚀
That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and took some inspiration away from it! Feel free to reach out with feedback, ideas, and things you would like me to write more about. Make sure you hit subscribe below, to be among the first to receive this newsletter in the future