023. A cold front blows across the clout.
T’was another day of @Mae-mas.
And all through the BitHouse?
Not a creature was stirring (DAUs are down). Not even @deadmau5.
The creators were sending diamonds without care,
In hopes that St. @Diamondhands soon would be there.
@Designsta was nestled all snug in their beds;
With visions of a strong rebuttal dancing in their heads…
OK, we’ll admit, we have NO idea why we caught the Christmas spirit in May here. Maybe everyday just feels like a holiday in the clout-iverse?
We hope you managed to enjoy the above (rough) summary of what to expect from this issue. No more Christmas puns in the actual content, we promise. Let’s dive in! 🐋
Bits on the menu today:
1. BuzzClout: Exclusive look at today’s movers and shakers presented by @bitcloutsignal
2. UX deep dive: TikTok + BitClout’s Got Talent
3. A cold front rolls in: DAUs in free fall
4. Designsta: Flipping the Script- an unedited response from the sisters.
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
First things first. In partnership with @bitcloutsignal, here’s an exclusive look at today’s movers and shakers:
#2 Ubiquitous UX Drops: TikTok + BitClout’s Got Talent
It’s the crossover we’ve all been waiting for (okay, maybe it was mostly @trademeproject). You can now directly embed your TikTok videos onto your feed on BitClout.com
After announcing the new functionality by posting a TikTok by @dojacat (as of yet inactive) with the caption “Testing,” @maebeam wasted no time in launching BitClout’s first TikTok challenge.
With a full week to enter the contest, BitClouters might be feeling like they have too much time to come up with clever submissions. We’ve got popcorn at the ready for a TikTok marathon, provided someone makes a compilation of all the entries. Come to think of it, that’s going to be our feature request for the next week. We want an Oscars award show equivalent of BitClout TikToks. We’re happy to help host and arrange. Sound good, @Maebeam?
#3 A cold front rolls in: DAUs dive
There’s no hiding it. Both anecdotally and in the hard stats, activity on BitClout has been a bit … muted this past week. According to data from @cloutgate, DAUs have sunk below 9k in recent days, whereas in mid-April, the record high eclipsed the 20k mark.
For reference, social media titans like Snapchat have more than 200M DAUs. Since BitClout is only a month old, that’s of course not a fair comparison point, yet. But what was a strong uptrend is now moving in the wrong direction. And among the folks who are still active on the platform, this has sparked significant discussion.
What’s causing this dive in DAUs? And more importantly, how might we start to fix it? There are many theories, ideas and suggestions out there. The answer is likely a mosaic of some, if not all of them. In the balance of this section, we will cover those we found particularly compelling ⬇️⬇️
Firstly, we wanted to shout-out @MillyTamati for a highly open, authentic post in which she noted how creator coins and back-slapping from high-valued BitClout accounts can be kind of a turn-off for new users.
Importantly, she then made some pivotal points about how BitClout can get back on track:
“This is the most unattainable content we could be putting out to people… we need to be focusing on content rather than coin”
What we loved especially about @millytamati’s suggestion is that it’s within our control. As active creators on the platform, we can model behavior (and ideally encourage 🐳, too) to focus on outstanding content above all.
Elsewhere, there’s been a lot of strong discussion around how functionality (both existing and desired) could help (or exacerbate) the slide in DAUs. For one, @mubashariqbal succinctly summarized one concern that this editor shares, namely that the new diamond tipping feature, especially it’s tiered configuration, could be confusing to new users, considering that it can even feel complicated for existing users.
@UsmanSheikh meanwhile was early to this topic as well, and posited that the key to re-igniting user adoption still lies firmly with devs spinning up great new projects surrounding BitClout.
And where do you all stand with respect to this(somewhat thorny) issue? We’d love to hear from you. Let’s get a comment storm going in the posts that include the link to this issue, yeah?
Most importantly, if you’ve read this far, it means you’re probably pretty active on BitClout. Keep doing what you’re doing. Stay warm, keep your 🔥🔥🔥 going. We’ll make it through this clout winter together 💪💪💪.
#4 Designsta: Flipping the Script- an unedited response from the sisters
Editor’s note: The below is an unedited statement from @Designsta in response to the section we ran on them in yesterday’s @BitsTODAY edition. We hope you enjoy and thanks to @Designsta for providing this information.
“Around 3 weeks ago we joined Bitclout because my husband and a friend were on here and had suggested it could be a great place for Designsta to build a following. We’re not from the crypto world and didn’t even have our own wallet. We’re still learning all the terminology but picking things up quickly. As we hadn’t bought any bitcoin before a close friend btcpepe helped us with the transfers and naturally invested in our coin as have other people we know over time. We definitely need to sort out our own transfers going forward but it’s not been a priority until now that suddenly everything we do is under scrutiny. We don’t see the same level of scrutiny being aimed elsewhere and one has to wonder why that is but hopefully that clears things up.
We’re bootstrapping Designsta, not broke. We meant we haven’t taken any outside investment. Frankly this isn’t anyones business but it seems we have more to answer for than others. We brought our own money in and over time as we became more convinced of the long term opportunity to grow the Designsta business we’ve increased our investment into our coin to build a more stable base for investors. We’ve also invested heavily into the community — just check our profile as our daily goals are always a mix of community driven goals and growth goals for us and our investors. We plan and we execute. Our short term goals are to achieve a top ten position for higher visibility and a platform to support the community from. We might not be an OG but we have years of entrepreneurial experience in our team, with top level advisors and a long term goal to build a large company that is intrinsically linked with bitclout and our coin. We see many questions about what is the value or how will your coin grow from here which is an odd question to us as it’s $1.37m to take a top 10 position — we’re building into a multi billion dollar market and we’re an early adopter of the next major social platform.
It was laughable to see the detective work going on knowing who some of our coin holders are but also scary especially when your own money is at risk. At least today people have seen we don’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble. We lost $200k on paper because of the article but we held strong and bought more. It’s also a real shame because we are one of the only creators to actually lay out a vision for how our investors can make long term returns and we were for a moment the only claimed female creator in the top 30 on our way to the top ten. Glass ceiling? We really hope that’s not the case here. We have now stabilised our coin and bought the dip. We had a lot of fire fighting to do today, all day since 6am. It’s now 11.30pm here and that isn’t sustainable with two kids and a business to run.
Unfortunately, there has been a lot of scams on here and that combined with the investment dynamics of bitclout create a recipe for panic selling. We need to be very careful not to alienate true creators who are here for genuine reasons and bringing their hard earned cash in to help build their businesses and support the community. Having backed well over 180 smaller creators on the platform and been a champion for female empowerment and charities since we arrived it’s been disappointing to have to spend 2 days on the defensive.
We weren’t ready to connect our other social channels yet because we were so new here but we were forced into doing so by the article that panicked our investors. We do have concerns with what our followers and customers will think of this place today. It’s not a day to be proud of. We believe we can and must do better for all our sakes. We all have a responsibility to be more diligent before setting fires like this in the future or we will remain a small community of early adopters. Hopefully we can move on now and spend our time growing and nurturing this seed we’ve been given.”
Louise and Lucie @Designsta x
All right, we hope you’ve all had your fill at the @BitsTODAY buffet tonight. We’re closing up shop for now. Tomorrow we’ll be back for another one of our signature Friday Happy Hours. Want to BYOB? Please do — we’re always stoked to have your contributions. If you caught our drift, we’re really talking about content for future editions ;). Get in touch with @nvo or hop into our discord HERE if you’re interested.
Best,
@BitsTODAY