General Idea
Sphere wants to change how we perceive social platforms and become the largest and most trusted decentralized social network in the world. They say that privacy, company transparency, and data security should be the fundamental building blocks of every social platform. Many social networks are collecting and selling a lot of information about their users. Sphere believes that users should be able to decide themselves what they want to sell and be able to get part of these profits.
Social Platform
Thanks to the blockchain technology, the platform will have an advantage over other mainstream and known sites, as none of them is able to provide this level of transparency, security and reliability. With more and more people getting concern about the amount of data, which is being collected without their permission through various social platforms, a transparent and fair treatment is a good solution. The platform will of course provide all of the usual social media aspects, which means you will be able to connect with your friends, create posts, upload photos and interact with content posted by others.
Owning your data
The main feature and advantage of the platform is the change when it comes to treating data and information created and provided by users. Nowadays, the biggest social platforms are constantly collecting data produced by activity and behaviour of their users. They sell it to big companies whether we like it or not. Sphere believes that people should be able to decide what happens with their data. The main reason these companies collect the data is to create better and more effective advertisements. Consumers will be able to decide themselves what happens to their data and browsing habits, while brands and companies will benefit from truly knowing that their marketing campaigns are reaching their desired audience more effectively, cutting down on the cost of marketing.
Marketplace
Sphere creates a common environment in which businesses, brands and various companies can directly reach their targeted customers while ensuring funds are not wasted in the process. In this common marketplace, the value of data is not determined simply by amount of empty views or clicks as it is now, but instead by the real effect it has on conversions.
Apart from creating a marketplace for data exchange, platform users will be able to use it for transactions and sells between friends or other users. The fact that the transaction and payment could happen within the blockchain is a great advantage, as it will eliminate any trust issues or scam possibilities. You could trade and sell your old items to other people in a very easy way, as all you need to do is take photos of the item, list it with a title, a description, and an asking price. You could even create your own goods or provide services and build a group of customers and followers.
Ad Platform
In the addition to the social media platform, Sphere has plans for creating a fully functional advertising portal. The advertising portal will allow users to create advertisements that will be displayed in the Sphere news feed. The advertising space could be bought with the SAT tokens. There will be a possibility to run the end in per-click and per-impression options. The costs could then be deducted automatically from the advertisers web wallets.
It’s worth noting that Sphere is an already existing product on the Google Play Store and the web. The iOS app beta is released for download on Apple App Store. You can check it out for yourself.
The Token
Social Activity Tokens (SAT) will be used for all of the transactions and payments within the network. They are based on Ethereum and have usual ERC-20 standard, which means you can store them alongside other ICO tokens in your favourite wallet of choice.
ICO Phase
The tokensale will be divided into four rounds. The first phase starts on the 12th of February, while the last one will end on the 9th of April. Each round have different bonuses and discounts, therefore the earlier you buy the most tokens you will be able to get for the best price. The initial price is set at $0.14 for one SAT token. All unsold and unallocated tokens will be destroyed, and additional release of tokens will not be possible. They aim to raise at least $1.5 million, with the hardcap set at $40 million. It is interesting that apart from accepting the most popular currencies like bitcoin, ethereum or litecoin, they also accept DogeCoin, which doesn’t happen that often and can maybe help reach out to more potential token buyers and investors.
The Team
The team behind the project is relatively big. Sphere consists of many experienced and skilled people. Apart from the developers responsible for the technical part of the project, there are also Marketing and Social Media experts. The fact that an already working demo product is available, shows that the team is determined and money raised through ICO crowdfunding can only help the project develop even more.
Final Thoughts
A decentralised privacy-oriented social network, undoubtedly has an advantage over regular and mainstream platforms, that we know and use today. If all of the basic social media features are provided, user will most likely prefer a decentralised and transparent platform to a regular one. Moreover, the fact that you could even earn some money by selling data, which you produce just by using the platform is very interesting and encouraging aspect. Other platforms do this whether you like it or not. To sum up, the project looks quite decent, the site and the platform is designed very well.