Topic: [ANN][GEMZ] GetGems - Social Messaging App That Pays - Live on Android, iOS, Web - page 269. (Read 597190 times)

Article about Gems from Altcoin Today

http://www.altcointoday.com/gems-social-messenger-owned-by-the-users/

CoinFire: "The Gems app puts the power of cryptocurrency in the hands of the users, without the usual complications that surround cryptocurrency technology today".
http://coinfire.cf/?p=1170&draftsforfriends=y00EleUSlGl770jR7eXO1fqLRhmErURd

Yes, in order to transfer GEMS on the bitcoin blockchain you need to pay a miners fee. Counterparty core developers achieved taking the fees down to 0.00002 btc, much lower than the standard Bitcoin core fee. Considering the scale we want Gems to grow, offchain solution plus redemption on-chain might be the best option.

Only a few days left to enter to win free Gems shirts and Gems. http://cryptoshoppers.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=84

We have had 7500 total entries. Lots of great support for this truly amazing project.

Hi,

If you don't mind me asking, is there Bitcoin miners fee for GEMS transfer? 

Thanks

Thank you.

Gems Interview: "Gems is a Social Messenger integrated with next generation bitcoin technology. Gems offers a WhatsApp style mobile experience with fully encrypted and private messaging, and a built in wallet"
http://bitcoinist.net/gems-exclusive-interview/

More information regarding the team will be announced soon.


Tentative date is November 1st.

There have been over 6400 entries for the Gems contest. 6 days remaining. Get entries by doing simple tasks. You will also subscribe to keep up to date about Gems developments.  http://cryptobillboard.com/features/

If you don't mind me asking, is there a tentative date for the first day of the pre-sale?

looking forward.
yibite report:
http://zl.yibite.com/point/2014/0930/23735.shtml

 
A lot of questions has been answered.

Did we talk about the team yet ?

I hope we'll get a chance to buy some ICO Gems before the big spenders jump on it !

Please read again the use cases for Gems and Gems distribution model.
Everything in Gems is built around rewarding the users.
If VCs and Angel Funds want to invest in the company thats very good news for the users.

Owned by the people and venture Capitalists?

I see...Didn't you just undermine the whole point of this. If we want a corporate rip off IPO we have ethureum and FB already.

This is starting to get repetitive: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8921859


Potential uses for Gems:

(1) Users pay the network in gems for sending unsolicited messages. Unsolicited messages are different from ads. Spam is a major issue with any communications platform (consider email and spam), causing users to hide their address in order to protect themselves. Having to pay with gems for unsolicited messages solves this problem at the core.

(2) Advertisers pay the network in gems for showing advertisements. Advertisements are different from standard unsolicited messages, and are considered the standard monetization method for social networks. Most of the revenue made by giants like Google and Facebook is made from targeted ads. See separate discussion of the proposed advertising models: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9017388

(3) Another feature of an in-app wallet is the ability to purchase third party offers directly from within the app with the click of a button. This is a key advantage for advertisers.

(4) Gems are the standard and native way for sending money within the Gems network. Whether you owe a friend money for lunch or looking to buy a service from a third party you’re communicating with, paying using gems will be a very convenient method (especially for people who don’t have a strong crypto currency background). Every Gems username is synonymous with a gems wallet, making payments to contacts as easy as clicking a button in the app.

(5) Anonymous users must hold a minimum of gems in order to be fully trusted by the network. One of the problems with any social network is abuse and fraud. This problem is easier to solve if users are validated against some physical identity such as a phone number. Since privacy and anonymity are becoming increasingly important, trusting users through identification is becoming increasingly difficult. Some delicate actions within the network will be reserved for trusted users, for example participating in airdrops, appearing in the user directory, sending friend requests, etc. Owning gems (and not necessarily spending them) is a quick and easy way for anonymous users to become trusted and enjoy privileged actions.

(6) As the network grows and new features are added, some of those will require payment to sustain. Gems will always exist as a payment option for any value added features available in the app. Additionally, as new p2p reward models are created, new opt-in features will become available enabling sharing economy type activities, crowdfunding, and more. Since this is the first time the users will control the core value of the social network it is too early to predict what new novel ideas will come into existence

Don't think there is currently any cryptocurrency (except bitcoin) with a few hundred thousand people.

Gems is a gateway to cryptocurrency, encrypted social messaging and the ability to transmit value via txt message.
We think Gems is in a very good spot to get a foothold in one of the most sought after spaces in the market.


Gems is a startup.
If everything was already developed today we would have not had a pre-sale.
venture Capitalists and Angel Funds are taking our product very seriously.
no fairy dust.  

Ok here are my problems with this ICO.

The premise is with Bitcoin backing the app then it therefore will be popular. But here are tons of apps that market themselves as anonymous or decentralised and have just as much chance as this one of getting popular. But the reality is 99% of these social media apps fail, you can buy clone codes of social media sites for a $50 dollars, your asking for lightning to strike twice like FB and a few others. I have friends who use FB, Snapchat, Whatstheapp and Instagram they simply wouldn't touch another social app. Bitcoin has a very specialised market anyway, its not got mainstream appeal, the media crushed that idea in he minds of the average person, and your asking them to accept another currency?

So the Gems thing is a nice idea but I can't imagine outside of crypto anyone would choose a chat app based on earning some gem that looks in all intent and purpose like a crystal they might collect on many android and OS games these days. I just don't think its fair to suggest making the next Snap Chat etc is just about throwing great stuff together. And that the problem is if this app gets used by a few hundred thousand people then its basically dead. This kind of thing HAS to reach millions to work and that is if your honest a 1 in 100 or 1000 chance.  


Plus I see your app has no photo sharing?  No Video sharing? That already puts you behind the herd trying to enter this market. I want this to work but it gonna be a lot of hope followed but a lot of reality when the numbers don't come in. Sorry that's how I feel. if you could tone the language down about FB and Whatsthe app I could at least take this seriously as a more small scale project.

Once the giveaway is finished there will be a drawing from all the entries for the t-shirt winners. There will also be a drawing for 500 winners of Gems. All winners will be notified by email. Once the pre-sale is completed all winners will be contacted and be able to redeem their Gems.

LetsTalkBitcoin: "Gems is a gateway to cryptocurrency, providing what could be a seamless slide into the world of shared success": http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/gems-taking-back-social-networks

The top monetization tool for social networks is targeted ads. Giants like Google and Facebook derive the majority of their revenue from ads.

The Gems team is experimenting with several advertising models - will be great to hear feedback from the community.

Gems whitepaper is also open for anyone to comment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10ZIvAbI-91qyJTbAaxCH3etbgMy9AyOsf403rhPu4pA/edit


One of the main problems of any communication platform is spam. The fact that communication is constantly becoming cheaper enables spammers to send bulk messages to unwilling recipients. The common approach to spam is heuristics-based flagging and filtering (this is how gmail works). The problem is that this method is extremely inaccurate and only works well if the same exact spam message is duplicated thousands of times. Users resort to hiding their personal address in order to avoid spam. Consider what would happen if a celebrity like Oprah would publicly share her personal email - no spam prevention algorithm would be able to handle that.

In a world where the spam problem has been solved, there would be no need to hide your address. Everybody’s personal address will be public and we will no longer rely on secrecy to stop abuse. If you think about it, every major personal communication platform - such as email, phone, SMS, WhatsApp - fails at this point.

Why do we hate spam so much? The answer is basic economics. Reading incoming messages is time consuming, and our time is a very valuable resource. The straightforward solution is therefore basic economics as well. If consuming messages is expensive, sending them should be expensive as well.

By placing a gem price tag on sending personal unsolicited messages, we can guarantee that users pay for the right to contact you. It’s important to emphasize that sending messages between friends (approved contacts) is not considered unsolicited since the recipient has explicitly agreed to receive messages from the sender. This means that within the Gems network, sending messages between friends will always be free.

How expensive should sending a message be? The natural answer should also rely on basic economic principles. The more popular the recipient, the more expensive contacting them should be. This concept is found in the bidding system employed by Google for their adwords platforms. Every advertiser enters a bid of how much they agree to pay for a click. Roughly speaking, the system displays the highest bids, making popular keywords more expensive because people are willing to pay more for them. Borrowing this principle to our model, we can decide on the number of unsolicited messages a recipient will receive in a period of time, and take the highest bids from competing senders.

It might be a good idea to make this mechanism opt out. If a user is willing to receive unsolicited messages, they should be able to allow strangers to message them for free.

Another interesting feature of this mechanism can be read receipts. The sender of an unsolicited message is probably interested in whether the recipient has read the message or not.


Unlike unsolicited messages which are personal in nature (like introducing yourself to a beautiful girl and asking if she’s single), ads are commercial in nature.

The central distribution channel in Gems is instant messaging. Private message ads are messages that will appear in the incoming message screen next to messages you receive from your contacts. These messages will be marked as promotions so recipients could differentiate between them and regular personal messages. A popular similar advertising channel is the promotion tab in gmail - where users receive promotional emails from advertisers directly into their inbox.

The key for maximizing the effectiveness of ads is targeted advertising. Keeping ads relevant makes both the viewer and the advertiser happy. Advertisers will not choose a specific list of recipients to receive their ads, but define some relevancy criteria for the target audience. Criteria can be based on content, similar to how Google adwords works - ie. show this ad to users interested in buying an engagement ring. Criteria can also be based on an audience profile, similar to how Facebook ads work - ie. show this ad to single males in the age of 20-25.

Employing content based targeting within Gems is mostly a privacy issue. Platforms such as gmail analyze (anonymously) the content of read messages and try to match a relevant ad based on keyword similarity. This can be performed automatically within Gems, but only on non-secure messages. Secure messages are encrypted client-client end to end and cannot be deciphered by the Gems infrastructure. In addition, content analysis should be opt out to protect user privacy upon request.

Profile based targeting within Gems is a little more tricky. The Gems network does not require users to fill any profile information. An interesting potential solution is to let users provide a voluntary profile by answering questions that will help Gems deliver relevant content more effectively and personally (ie. what is your age). To encourage users to give as much details as possible, the network can compensate users using gems for doing so. A natural way to implement this is by taking part of the cost paid by the advertiser and giving it to the ad recipient. We can even make the payout proportional to the amount of provided profile data. Some profile data can also be generated automatically, but usually at the expense of privacy. A good example is geo-location. As long as the user agrees to share his location with the app, we will be to use this data in order to show local ads. It’s important to emphasize that profile data will never be shared with the advertisers and will only be used by the network anonymously to deliver relevant ads.

The cost of advertising should probably be based on bids as well. The size of the target audience is limited (the number of participating users that fit the ad criteria), so only the ads with the highest bids will be shown. Another interesting question is whether these ads will be paid per exposure or per click (an advertiser only pays if a user opens their message and reads it). If we choose the latter, the natural approach would be to maximize the network profit from ads by factoring both the amount of the bid and the success click-through rate of previous exposures, and choosing which ads to display accordingly.


Quality of service (QoS) is an interesting factor worth exploring for monetization purposes. Consider the real world example of shipping packages. The free shipping method is usually a standard service such as USPS, which takes a little longer to deliver and offers less control over tracking and delivery status. The shipper can pay extra for a premium shipping service such as FedEx, which arrives much faster and is generally more reliable.

Borrowing from this example to the Gems ecosystem, users will pay for sending messages with a higher priority. Delivery speed and reliability are probably not the aspects to play with, because the standard free messages on Gems always arrive virtually immediately and are extremely reliable.

So what aspects can we use instead? One option is the sort order of incoming messages. Normally, incoming messages are sorted according to arrival time. It makes sense that high priority messages will always appear first regardless of arrival time. Another option is to highlight high priority messages and mark them for special consideration. This can be achieved by using a more prominent notification sound or by using bolder colors / urgency icons for the message in the incoming message list. Another option is to send several push notifications regarding a high priority message if it hasn’t been opened by the recipient (instead of just a single one like we do with normal messages). Another option is to provide tighter control over delivery indication and notify the sender more prominently immediately when the recipient has opened the message. Another option is to display priority message inline in the incoming message list, meaning the recipient will not have to click on them in order to read their content.

Generally speaking, if recipients are aware that an incoming message was paid for, they will be more inclined to open and handle it in a timely fashion.


The Gems user profile will potentially include a status message. Every user can choose their own status line - which is very similar in concept to a Facebook status or WhatsApp status. This status line will appear below every username in the contact list / user directory.

The status line is an excellent platform for a quick 1-line advertisement. Consider the following use case - a startup looking for new developers. A member in the startup will set their status to “looking for talented ios/android developers” and invite any of their contacts to message them about potential applicants they know.

It makes sense to make these appearances sponsored as well. A sponsored result will probably appear first in the list of contacts (and probably be labeled as a sponsored result). In addition, we might also show sponsored results in user contact lists which aren’t related as direct contacts. For example, even if I don’t personally know the startup member looking for a developer, I will still see their sponsored result when I enter my contacts screen or when I search in the user directory.

Keeping advertisements relevant is similar in nature to previous channels, such as targeting by content and targeting by profile. In addition, another interesting criteria is the distance between users (hop count or connection degree - 1st degree are immediate friends, 2nd degree are friends of friends, etc). It makes sense to show sponsored statuses from users who travel in similar circles.



The traditional entities within the Gems network are private individuals. Any user can join Gems and connect with their friends. Just like how Facebook grew to accommodate businesses as an entity within the network, Gems might make the same decision as well. Registering a new user as a commercial entity / business is a good candidate for a paid action.

How will company / business users be different from regular users? First of all, the profile page will have a commercial orientation and show relevant details about the business - such as an address / map location, website, logo, phone number, email, link to mobile app, opening hours, etc. In addition, business users will be geared towards e-commerce. Since the Gems network allows for easy fund transfers between users, it will be convenient to use for light e-commerce (1-click purchases).

Deeper e-commerce capabilities will allow businesses to present a goods/services catalog, support checkout with Gems and provide light order management.