In his 1995 book Global Paradox, author John Naisbitt — best known for his New York Bestseller book Megatrends — predicted a world characterized by two seemingly conflicting concepts; embrace of globalization and closer focus on local realities. He is credited with popularizing the line ‘think global, act local.’

It is easy to see social media as part of the fulfilment of Naisbitt’s prediction. Networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter create people’s view of themselves, and of others, as global citizens. And thanks to these platforms, it is possible, often in very intimate ways, for the person on the street to have connections from any part of the globe.

The potential

Through interest pages, groups and channels, social media has also made local mobilization around pressing societal issues easier. But where social media has found the greatest use is in business, and, in particular, marketing. According to Brandwatch, a UK based social media monitoring company, over 80% of businesses around the world are on at least one social networking site.

These businesses use the channels they create to reach out to prospective clients, offer customer support and build awareness about their offers. And while doing all these, they spend over US$50 billion annually on the sites as advertisement fees.

We are at the point where it is a major loss for any business to ignore social media. According to a report by market research company Nielsen, about 46% of online users are influenced by social media in their consumption choices. Another research has indicated that about 68% of Facebook users are inclined to buy from a business their friends recommend.

The problem

However social media disadvantages small businesses. Most local shops and stores struggle to get significant value from the networking sites. And, in particular, the ‘act local’ aspect is progressively being eroded. To succeed on social media, a local or small business has to acquire additional expert social media talent. This talent is often beyond their budget and hard to come by.

Also, the more detailed and nuanced user data a business accesses, the more effective and highly targeted its marketing becomes. But acquiring, analysing and deploying user data is not only controversial but also expensive. It is major brands that easily overcome the budget barrier involved.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of indication that local businesses are more beneficial to communities than larger brands. One Canadian study has shown that 45% of sales from small retailers is injected in the local economy. Meanwhile only 17% from large retailers goes to the local economy. Small business also add more jobs to a local economy.

More weaknesses exist in the model on which the majority of social media platforms are built. Most outstanding is how value generated is shared among stakeholders. Users create content and attract traffic, but they hardly get any compensation for their effort. The entire revenue from advertisers remain with the company behind the social networking site.

The solution

Fliptech has designed the first collaborative social media platform that would address most of these issues. The FlipNpik platform built on the 360° Collaborative Economy model, connects local businesses with prospective customers around it using global positioning system (GPS). It also compensates users to create and curate content.

The platform is built with incentives to help the most relevant customers to find the business, instead of the other way round. It rewards users through Flip Social (FS) reward system with the FlipNpik (FNP) utility tokens for creating accounts, sharing content, liking posts and recommending businesses. Users can also be rewarded for putting up pages for local businesses that are not already on the platform.

The FlipNpik (FNP) tokens are managed on the Stellar blockchain, chosen for its high transaction confirmation capacity and low fees. On the other hand, businesses can join the FlipNPik platform as merchants and expose their services to the local market. While joining the platform and being visible through searches is free, business pay a fee to access premium services such promotions, post scheduler and data analysis.

The value

To help local businesses access the necessary social media talent, FlipNpik has created a partner ambassador program. Users can register to become partner ambassadors and have the responsibility of promoting, creating content and engaging fans on behalf businesses around their locality.

For their effort, partner ambassadors earn 20% of the fees that businesses pay to FlipNpik in utility tokens. Ordinary users can spend their earning from the reward system to access other services on the platform such as games, discounts from participating businesses and even money (by converting to fiat on exchanges).

Participating businesses can choose to accept payment in FNP. This opens the possibility of FlipNpik users getting better deals such as discounts and coupons when buying from local businesses. Users can acquire FNP tokens through the upcoming initial coin offering (ICO), buying through exchanges, selling products as participating businesses or by being active on the platform and getting rewarded for it.

The FlipNpik app is already available on Play Store and App Store. Nevertheless, the development team is still working to improve the entire system. Funds raised during the ICO will go into facilitating this process.

Website : https://flipnpik.io/

Telegram : https://t.me/flipnpikico