Is SolarCoin going viral?
Sometimes I really wonder: is crypto insane? Fortunately, In an age of social media, it's possible to assess even that. Yup: we can ask - how viral is this damn thing? That has a big impact on price, so let's do it for #SolarCoin.
SolarCoin's Twitter followers - around 200 new followers per week
In an era where many - perhaps most - buy and sell digital currencies for seemingly irrational reasons, social media reflects passion, and we can look at that to understand how the emotional waves of the internet are ebbing and flowing.
So: how viral is SolarCoin?
Six months ago things were pretty quiet. Mentions of SolarCoin were difficult to find. Some old news on Google, a few twitter feeds and a fairly quiet facebook group, and good 'ol Nick Gogherty explaining his concept to a few vloggers on Youtube.
Is that tumbleweed we hear?
Fast forward to early 2018 and things are starting to improve. Bloggers (like me) are beginning treat solarcoin as the basis of their posts, particularly on Steemit. Fancy explainer videos are starting to appear. This month a brand new official SLR twitter feed - SolarCoin News popped up and is doing a fine job pumping it all out SLR news and related commentary. The SolarCoin affiliate programme appears to be taking off with various new platforms have apppeared for onboarding new users. And there are busy Slack, Facebook and Telegram groups.
So things are getting busier, which is obviously great. Spreading any meme online requires significant production of materials to share, tweet, blog, post, like, comment on. So the more, er, stuff there is, the merrier.
It's also instructive to look at how online interest compares to other cryptocurrencies. In the examples below I've compared SolarCoin to other energy cryptos, but you could do similar using the trends.google.com function.
Below we can how many people are using searching for particular terms:
Obviously, SolarCoin is not the top of the energy coin agenda. With 100 google searches a day, significantly lower than 'market leader' POWRs. However, things are definetely improving.
It's also instructive to find out where people are searching for 'SolarCoin':
Perhaps surprisingly Australia has seen the most interest, and a noticeable absence in China.
Compare that to POWRs:
And recent ICO Envion:
This kind of analysis should help identify where work could be done to spread the message.
So back to our question: how viral really is SolarCoin?
Well, we can see that things are on the up. Participation in social media is rising on all counts. However, the search volume demonstrates that it's certainly possible to go higher - showing an uncomfortable truth: must do better.
In the meantime, a big shout out to all those who have been producing and promoting SLR's materials into the viralosphere - keep it up!
If you wanna keep seeing posts like these on SolarCoin then donations are always appreciated! My SLR wallet address is 8KMNbjbqyTjoXSRHiz8mu7oVUVKsNGKea1
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
When I signed up for my reward, I just sat back and waited for it. For several months I had no idea how the foundation operated or that I can and should help promote it. I think a newsletter that automatically gets sent to all members (with an option to unsubscribe) would be a good way to get more people on board with the social promotion.
@cstrimel - I agree! But then again I imagine that they're quite busy - comms with 'members' can get put to the back of the list. But yes, a monthly/ quarterly update from the SCF would be great.
Because SolarCoin isnt doing a flashy ICO then social media penetration is harder, but thats not always a bad thing. SLR is pretty stable, save for the otherwise crazy roller-coaster that Bitcoin causes.
Mmm, it's a shame that SLR can't ICO!
Well, its fraught with dangers. First of all you have a much higher risk of falling foul of national laws with ICOs, even if you do the huge amount of work to ensure they arent breaching rules they make your project a target for hackers.
Even if thats all covered, all of a sudden the team who was happy to do it for kicks, now expects to be all driving Lambo cos they knows you just got $$$m in your pocket, so where is their share. Oh and the lead developer is kinda busy right now, takin' some time now we got the stress of the ICO over, he'll get to development next week for sure, or maybe the week after... after all there is no guarantee anything will get delivered, and we got all the money, so chill out.
Hilarious @scalextrix - I like it. I agree - dumping a huge amount of cash into a start up is a surefire way for some of it to get wasted. But in some ways that doesn't matter - it's not as if the ICO money has to pay a return or anything. I've been looking at the upcoming DAXT ICO - which is basically a platform to address some of the 'kick back and party' issues that a startup might have after a ton of cash is dumped into its accounts - check it out if you're into that kind of thing.
Also I wonder if many of the other organizations that ICO can work with solarcoins, that said nothing said that SLR couldnt become a platform for ICO, just need more devs to get the blockchain to recognize crowdfunding-smart contracting.
Really? You think smart contracting could be added in AFTER a coin has been launched? I'm not so familiar witht the ins and outs of the SLR blockchain, but it's relatively old, no?
But it would certainly add to uptake if, for example, internet of things functionality was built in, like the MIOTA coin or something.
Also I wonder if many of the other organizations that ICO can work with solarcoins, that said nothing said that SLR couldnt become a platform for ICO, just need more devs to get the blockchain to recognize crowdfunding-smart contracting.
Although you can already do this to a degree with multi-signature and OP_Codes.
Virality is something that crypto makes it incredible, however I wonder what good can this virality can benefit and whom. I would love to see the power of solarcoin improve the green tech status and make it more available to everyone. Solarcoin has a mission which is to tokenize the production of solar and create value on top of it. But I think that also solar tech could benefit from this value as well as make global by using a global currency.
Since SLR is engineered to become more valuable as solar producers sign up and receive the coin, virality will serve the purpose of helping new people learn about it and then sign up. In regard to other currencies that have less intrinsic value, virality could just lead to bubbles, but in the case of SLR it’s about getting more people on board.
Some sort of payment app would be super-useful. I notice that some of the Steemit blogs say that's what they're working on at the moment.