Are you guys a competitor of Bitclave? Which others would you also consider being your competitors in the space?
Yes, Bitclave would be a competitor. There are a large number of alternative search engines - ex. DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, startpage.com, and many others. Google of course. We are the only one with a working search engine that actually utilizes a token tor reward members and pay for ads though. I don't expect that this will be the case forever, but right now, we are leading the blockchain/crypto search space.
Ok I confess I didn't know how far you've gotten then as I lost some interest in decentralized search a while ago. It is probably the hardest space to conquer with google being in the driving seat. The synergies they can create with all the data they have are just amazingly strong. It may take decades to get even close to them, wouldn't it?
Yes, it's a massive challenge, but also a huge opportunity. The space is so large and valuable, that you really don't need to dominate the category. We believe that due to our community-focused model and the integration of our PRE token to align everyone's interest, that we'll be able to make a significant dent over time.
And besides, we don't need to beat Google - you can search Google through Presearch.
We are just driving a thin wedge between people's existing search behaviour to minimize the friction. Once people start accumulating tokens, they have some skin in the game and are more willing to do some additional work, spread the word actively and build the network.
We're on track to exceed the early growth of both Google and DuckDuckGo already, and we haven't really even tried to expand yet.
We just did a major release yesterday of a new anti-abuse platform to prevent people from gaming the system. There's a bit of work involved to bring everyone up to speed, but so far the feedback has been largely positive. Now that it's in place, it's almost go time!
Thanks for your interest! Please feel free to join at
https://www.presearch.org if you like.
Alright, I will obviously have to take a deeper look at your stuff.
As for the skin in the game part that you mentioned, I generally agree with that. The only issue is that I read about some other platform which aims to monetize data, that the actual reward is just not really big enough to get the Western world to care about their search behavior. Are there any realistic quantitative examples you could provide?
Thanks, dzonikg28!
Yes, I think that's definitely an issue to contend with, especially during crypto winter... I think we've been fortunate that many people believe Presearch has the potential to be highly valuable in the future, and are thinking more about the future value of their rewards than the current value... It seems to help a lot...
But the other thing is that it's really about gamification - not just the monetary value... People like the real-time feedback they get when they search and the coin flips, and their balance is prominently displayed and increases constantly.
We will also be creating different ways for people to spend their PRE and are focused on making it as easy as possible for them to convert their PRE to things they value significantly.
On top of that, the platform itself does offer significant advantage for power users - we're basically providing people with a faster, easier way to search specific resources. Ex. I do domain name lookups, search our CRM system, our admin portal, etc., all from the same field, rather than having to bookmark them, wait for each site to load, click into the search field and search. Instead, I just pull up Presearch, type my query and then click the icon for where I want to direct my search.
This doesn't appeal to everyone, but we've been impressed by how many people find it valuable. It's a nice little hack.
And then there's our mobile app for voice search. Not sure if you're on iOS, but if so, you may want to check it out in the app store.
There's an invite code - 'tapandhodl'... Basically, to search, you just tap the Presearch logo and hold it down while you speak...
You can deep search various apps on your phone - ex. say 'Presearch Google Maps for buffalo, new york' and it'll launch Google Maps and run your query there.
There are currently 80 or so providers in the system, but hundreds more are on the way.
It's an exciting space to be in because it's so significant in scope and depth... Many, many opportunities to integrate tokenomics to create feedback loops that incentivize behaviour and generate value...
As long as we denominate our sponsorships / ad units with PRE and make that the central unit of account, as the platform grows, the need for tokens will also increase.
We are also seizing the opportunity to connect with people who are fed up with Google and Facebook dominating the web, and who want an alternative. We protect and respect their privacy, and so that is a significant selling feature as well.
Now, most of that was anecdotal, quantitatively, we've chosen not to install analytics on the platform to go with our focus on privacy, and that makes it a little challenging.
From our token sale, where we did collect location information, more than 60% of our more than 4,000 purchasers were located in North America.
It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. We'll keep the BitcoinTalk community posted as things progress!