Some might call me anti-social. Some might call me pro-social. I'm not really an introvert or an extrovert. But lately, I've become more and more crypto-social. I'm a huge fan of leveraging social media and building a personal brand. It's a lot of work, but it can really pay off. And when social media pays you, it can really pay off.

Obviously there's publish0x, which is where I originally wrote this article. Though I'm also posting it on Medium (not crypto). But there are many other social media platforms that are emerging that leverage blockchain and cryptoassets. Some of these platforms are similar to already existing platforms. BelaCam, for instance, is largely a crypto version of Instagram. SoMee is sort of a hybrid between Twitter and Facebook.

These platforms use a number of different methods to monetize social media. Some use their own cryptoasset, which can be generated in different ways and then given out to users. Others use existing cryptoassets that are paid into the fund by advertisers. Publish0x uses this method, which does still make the advertiser the customer, but the ads are less intrusive, and readers are being paid in order to view ads.

I'm really not sure which model or models are going to be successful at the moment. Economically speaking, if you're going to pay someone, they should be putting something of value into the system. And it's very difficult to set a price on content in many cases, especially when aggregate content, rather than individual content is what creates value.

But I do see a future in monetizing social media, and monetizing our general activities. Most of what we do in life is productive, but we don't get anything of value for it in return. That paradigm needs to change. So I'll continue to support these different platforms, try them out, build up as much of a following as I can, and hopefully with a little bit of luck, I'll be one of the early adopters of the next big social media operation.

I'm an amateur photographer and digital artist. I'd like to be more than that. But it's really difficult to monetize art, unless you work as a graphic designer for a company. Some people do get lucky and become well known enough that they can get commissions to do art, but my type of art doesn't lend itself well to that option.

BelaCam has the potential of really monetizing photograpy and other forms of art, by allowing people to get paid in BELA when someone likes your post. BELA can be purchased, or earned through referrals. Liking a post does not create new BELA. Instead, you're giving one BELA from your account, to the artist. You'll need to get more BELA if you run out; otherwise you won't be able to like more posts. I don't mind this system. You're basically just tipping the aritst when you like their work.

Recently the price of BELA has been dropping a lot. There's very little trading volume, so there's high volatility. I will say that a lot of the people who are complaining about the price of BELA are just speculators that don't seem as interested in the success of BelaCam itself.

If you're used to Facebook, this platform will seem very similar. There's no chat feature, but you do have your page, and can share posts to it and to the pages of others. It's similar to the early days of Facebook. However, it does already have group support built in. SoMee can publish to its own blockchain, and to Steemit. You have to manually select which chains you want the post to be pushed to, or you can set it to automatically post to them through your settings. Each upvote will give you a small amount of their currency: ONG. Unfortunately SoMee has no referral program.

While I'm initially writing this article on publish0x, I'm also posting it to other platforms, like Medium. While I like Medium and think it has potential, there's just too much nepotism, and not enough support for crypto-enthusiasts. Publish0x has a lot of potential, even though it's in beta. Payments are itself in cryptoassets, and as has recently been announced, pretty soon companies will be able to provide publish0x with their own crypto for use as a tip, in return for sponsored blurbs. It's a great way for blockchain based companies to work with each other to promote one another and become a more robust ecosystem. I've even suggested to BelaCam's team that promote BELA through the platform. It would be great to be able to get tipped in BELA and then use that money to tip other people for their amazing artwork on BelaCam.

Okay. Blockchain Cuties is not social media, but it's fairly social in some ways, as there's a solid community of "cutineers" on Telegram. It's also a fun blockchain based game. I've written about my "portfolio" of cuties on publish0x already, and I think it has a lot of potential. They also have their own ERC-20 token, CUTE, which means that they could also promote themselves through publish0x.

Summery

A lot of people use blockchain and cryptocurrency to gamble and hope that a given token goes to the moon and they can retire and live a luxurious lifestyle. It's happened for some. But I see blockchain and cryptoassets as the future of how we interact with each other. There are already so many platforms emerging, and quite frankly, I think we've only scratched the surface. I believe that we will see use cases that haven't even been considered yet. And I can't wait to see what they are.

Note: Referral links are included in this article for increased revenue generation and support of the platforms.