Empowering every voice: How Pop Social fixes what’s broken in social media

Social media platforms have become data refineries, extracting user information with little regard for privacy or fairness. Pop Social flips the script by putting data ownership firmly in the hands of users, who can use it to unlock exclusive benefits and personalize their experiences.

SocialFi is about returning the power of data ownership, direct interaction, fair revenue, and community governance to social media users and creators. While not without its pitfalls, it is an exciting and quietly emerging development with the potential to revolutionize the way we interact online.

Post @popapp_official AMA revelation! At Pop Social, it’s not just creators creating value – users are essential too! Users aren’t just a product; through engagement and fostering growth, they create a positive feedback loop.

Catch the full AMA now! ?https://t.co/UnrrzBWPAE

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) December 22, 2023

The challenges and opportunities of SocialFi, as well as SocialFi’s latest project, Pop Social, became the topic of the Cointelegraph Twitter Spaces session. Pop Social is an AI-powered social gateway to Web3, democratizing content ownership and empowering the AI-creator economy. Its CEO, Michael Shen, talked about the details of the project.

On flaws with current social media models

We have a lot of limitations with popular social media platforms. First, we don’t have control over our data, content, or privacy. All of this is sold and exploited without our consent. Another major problem is that social media and targeted advertising create echo chambers: if you see a certain type of content that you like and you engage with it, then you will be sent the same content.

What’s more, users don’t really get any kind of reward: platforms make money with their stakeholders, while creators have to agree to any fee offered to them, and users get nothing. Social media platforms have completely taken advantage of the current system and set their own rules that you have to follow if you don’t want to be excluded. That’s what really annoys me, he says passionately.

On real rewards for creators and users

In Pop Social, we aim to address all of these key issues. We believe that it’s the users and creators who create the value on the platform. They’re responsible for creating the network effects, and they should be able to keep 100% of what they create on the platform. Why do we encourage users as much as creators? Because they bring other users to the platform, they make certain creators viral, and they create this positive feedback loop. Overall, we create a sense of organic engagement that has helped build strong stickiness on our platform. Our users now spend an average of over an hour a day on Pop Social.

Ad tech monetization happens directly on our platform. Users create and contribute to that value, we give a greater share of the revenue to users and creators. For example, you can get a Uniswap ad and for interacting with it, you’ll get rewards from the platform, bigger than in the Web2 case. Users see what they want to see in ads and are rewarded for engagement, so they treat ads as rewards, which will ultimately change the relationship between advertisers and users.

Content creators can start earning rewards from their first posts if their content is engaging and resonates with the community. We have removed arbitrary thresholds and some of the requirements of traditional social media. It is not geographically restricted, either: anyone in the world can be a creator, even in places where people don’t have access to reliable banking or traditional financial structures, thanks to the blockchain-based token reward system.

We ensure that all content within Pop Social is high quality, non-spam, authentic, and community-driven. If users or bots are creating spam content, they’re not earning anything because there’s no engagement. So, the incentive to create low-quality content is strongly discouraged.

On Pop Social tokenomics and mass crypto adoption

From the beginning, we’ve focused on providing a seamless experience for our users, especially those who don’t have much experience with crypto, through the Web3 abstraction. We do all the Web3 engagement in the background: which means you can just download the Pop Social app and have the experience immediately. You don’t need to have any crypto to pay for gas or any ETH to buy NFT. Our Pop Token (PPT) abstracts that whole experience.

We’ve also incorporated social gamification through NFT rewards and tokenization to create strong stickiness on the platform. We want to make sure that once users sign up and enter Pop Social, they see the content they want to see, find the communities they want to engage with and keep coming back.

The rewards come from our five-year ecosystem rewards. Based on our tokenomics emissions, that will be divided into daily rewards. For users and creators, based on that particular day, the amount of engagement they do on the platform and their contribution will be a percentage of how many tokens they’re going to be able to earn.

With Pop Tokens, they can participate in different activities within the Pop Social ecosystem: tip creators, level up social levels, open treasure chests, and unlock some gamification NFTs and rewards. Advertisers can also use Pop Tokens to push ads, while creators can boost their posts. Through all of these activities, we collect the Pop Token back through the ecosystem, and with a circular loop, we have a fixed supply of tokens where we can transfer the tokens, they come back, and then they can’t be added back into that cycle. So that allows us to create a sustainable feedback loop on the platform.

On dynamic NFTs and Treasure Chests

Our unique dynamic NFTs allow you to change their appearance and combine them with other NFTs. We call them accessory NFTs because you can change accessories on them, which changes their utility. For example, you’re a creator and you create an accessory NFT T-shirt for your fans. They get it and change the T-shirt they have on their NFTs. So our dynamic NFTs are designed to foster deeper engagement between creators and their audiences and keep all users on Pop Social.

You can get Dynamic NFTs through our Treasure Chests, where you can receive random accessory NFTs with different rarities. To do this, you first need a basic NFT from our Genesis collections Popbits or Cool Cappys. Then you participate in Treasure Chest and get, say, a Legendary Accessory NFT, which can increase your earning potential, get you a special badge or banner, or unlock some perks on our Discord.

On tools for easier content creation

As we aim to be at the forefront of Web3 and AI, we have been actively integrating AI to empower our users. The first tool is the Pop AI chatbot, which provides personalised guidance for Pop Social users, helps them navigate the platform and solve key problems.

We will also launch AI creator tools for content creation that will help anyone become a content creator or improve their existing content skills. It will create original content based on user prompts, as similar tools do, but also based on what is trending on the platform and what you and your followers are consuming. In addition, you will also be able to mint this content into creator NFTs and to create diverse and unique experiences in the Pop Social ecosystem.

What’s next for Pop Social?

Our next step is to create a social infrastructure layer for creators and users and easy-to-use tools for creators. We also want to support development on Pop Social or have interoperability with the platform. This is what we are doing in Pop Labs, which is more of an umbrella for Pop Social. The AI tools that we’ve developed in Pop Labs help lower the barriers to content creation. For example, on Instagram, you have to use Photoshop or a third-party app to get a perfect image. In Pop Social, you will be able to do everything within the app with the same quality and functionality. This way, we will also have more unique content, and it will be really easy for anyone to create it.