It takes a courageous man to tackle the world’s big social media networks, however Michael Shen, the CEO and co-founder of Pop App, thinks he can do it. The mannequin of most social media networks is unfair, he argues, as a result of the customers and content material creators that drive their success will not be correctly rewarded. Pop App, he suggests, will prosper by treating folks extra equitably.

“Social media platforms revenue from each the advertisements and the content material, however creators are left with out incomes alternatives,” Shen argues. “That’s why we created Pop – to disrupt your complete creator financial system and to turn out to be an equaliser providing incomes alternatives to all customers.”

Clearly, there’s loads of market to go at. The prevailing social media networks collectively boast 4 billion customers worldwide, with the typical person spending virtually two-and-a-half an hours a day on the platforms. Pop App solely wants to say a small variety of these eyeballs so as to make a big effect.

Shen’s technique is to lure folks on to the platform with rewards. Creators, for instance, will earn Pop tokens from the second they begin posting content material on Pop App, without having to fulfill follower thresholds; the blockchain-enabled tokens will enable creators to develop new sorts of engagement with followers – NFT launches, maybe – or they are often transformed into fiat foreign money.

Customers may even be rewarded – early adopters are additionally receiving tokens, however in the long term, Shen envisages a platform constructed on income sharing by way of sensible contracts. “Each person who creates content material, knowledge or mental property can turn out to be a beneficiary of Pop,” he says.

Extra broadly, Shen says Pop App is set to supply extra help and rewards to the individuals who drive its success. The platform’s algorithms are designed to advertise fascinating content material from even very small creators, in order that influencers with big follower counts don’t dominate. Creators will proceed to take care of management over their content material. Customers might be entitled to take part within the platform’s success. Against this, on present networks, Shen argues, “content material shoppers are left behind and don’t earn something”.

It’s an bold venture – the query is whether or not folks, each customers and creators, will discover the rewards on supply considerably enticing to start out utilizing Pop App in bigger numbers. “Now we have the chilly begin downside that faces any new platform, with the rooster and egg concern of needing creators to put up content material and customers to view it,” concedes Shen. “Nonetheless, we predict tokenisation will act as an enormous catalyst for adoption.”

His targets are definitely assured ones. Pop App at the moment has round 18,000 customers, who’ve helped the workforce develop early iterations of the platform throughout its beta section. Nonetheless, Shen thinks reaching 1 million customers by the top of the yr is reasonable. “Our final aim is to deliver 1 billion customers to Web3,” he says.

It’s an essential level. Pop App sees itself as a platform of the Web3 web, wherein the facility of the online is decentralised – with people retaining higher management of their knowledge and content material, and turning into far much less depending on big expertise companies.

“Our goal shouldn’t be solely to reimagine conventional fashions making use of blockchain expertise however to reinvent and fast-track mass Web3 adoption,” Shen says. “We wish to disrupt the present social media trade and past in the identical approach that Apple challenged Nokia.”

These are daring targets for a corporation simply beginning out – and which is totally bootstrapped up to now. Nonetheless, Pop App is at the moment speaking to buyers – it would want funding to get its tokenisation plans off the bottom – and places its present market worth at round $20 million, based mostly on person adoption and development. Social finance fundraisings reminiscent of Phaver and SoCol have attracted comparable valuations, Shen factors out.

Certainly, he insists his confidence shouldn’t be misplaced, with quite a lot of big-name enterprise capital corporations within the platform’s potential. “We predict we are able to begin monetising the enterprise as soon as we attain 100,000 customers,” he says. “And we are going to develop rapidly – Fb took virtually 10 years to succeed in 1 billion customers, whereas TikTok acquired there in about half that point; we predict we’ll get there even faster.”