WTF is dMania?

in #steem7 years ago

A couple of months ago I introduced dMania on the Steem blockchain. A lot of things have happened since then. The number of Steem users has grown tremendously the last couple of weeks. A lot of users don't know about dMania or other apps on the Steem blockchain besides Steemit. That's why I think it's a good time to do a recap of what dMania is all about and what the goals of dMania are in 2018.

WTF is dMania?

dMania is an app on the Steem blockchain for posting your favorite memes, funny pictures, gifs and videos. => https://dmania.lol
Because dMania is based on the Steem blockchain, you can make money by posting, commenting or upvoting posts. Just like on Steemit.

Steemit is a great platform, but it isn’t the best choice for every kind of content. Steemit is great for blog posts just like on Reddit or Medium. For other kind of content, there is a need for different platforms. That is why there are other apps on Steem like @dtube, @dsound, @dlive and @dmania

Memes and more


For a lot of people (me included) writing blog posts isn't easy. Many aren't talented writers, their native language isn't english or they are just not interested in writing blog posts. dMania provides them an alternative with memes.
dMania is an easier entry point for users to the Steem blockchain. I tried to make posting on dMania as easy as possible. All you need is a picture and a title, that's it.

Blockchains are completely new to most people. They don't know anything about private keys, wallets, tokens, ..... Most people just don't care. What they do care about is when they suddenly get rewarded for their posts, comments and upvotes. Especially when it's as simple as posting memes. That's why I think dMania is perfect to introduce a lot of new users to the Steem blockchain.

The users control the content

At the beginning I told people dMania is about memes and funny stuff. Ultimately people can post anything they like. I don't control the content or censor any posts. Users can flag posts and if a post has received enough flags, it will be filtered.

Some people complained about reposts on dMania. Copying a meme is of course a lot easier than creating one. dMania is mainly a place for sharing content, because it is impossible to know if you are the original creator. For memes it doesn't matter. A meme is basically a joke in form of a picture. For a joke it doesn't matter who the creator is. If you hear a good joke, you share it with your friends and family. It's the same for memes. The most important thing is that they are shared.

I still believe that original content will achieve more upvotes and higher rewards. If people repost, users can still flag that post and it will quickly disappear.

dMania in 2018

In 2018 I want to introduce dMania to the rest of the world. dMania already has the most important features and I think it's awesome. Of course I will make it a lot better in 2018, but the main goal is growth. One reason why I created dMania was because I wanted to show more people what the Steem blockchain can do. The social media industry has to change. Only a few are rewarded and most people get nothing. That's not fair and we as a community have to show them that there is a better way to do it.

I have been working on dMania in my spare time so far. From now on I will be working full time on dMania.
When I focus 100% of my time on dMania it can only get better. Finally I will have time to promote dMania outside of Steem and not only focus on development.

Goals in 2018

  • More users
    dMania has over 1000 unique visitors a day. Not so bad for a website that has lauchned only a few months ago. Most users are still coming from Steemit. That has to change. I already did some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and I am working on the Facebook an Twitter page. I will also run some ads and spread the message of dMania and Steem.
  • dMania app
    An app for dMania would be great. A lot of users have already requested it. There are still some things missing on Steem that are very important for an app, like user friendly log in and sign up. I think those issues will be resolved in 2018. A friend of mine just joined the dMania team and he will be working on an app for dMania.
  • Better usability
    I think one of the most important things for a website is the usability. It should be easy to use. Some small features can make a big difference. I will try to make using dMania as easy and smooth as possible.
  • Notifications
    dMania already has a simple notifications feature. I want to improve it and notify users when they got big uvpotes, a lot of comments or have been selected as Chosen One. I am going to add browser notifications besides the notifications on the website.
  • Tag pages
    I will probably add tag pages on dMania when there is more content. For now I think it is not that important. There are still some technical limitations on Steem that dMania can't have it's own tags. Maybe that will change or I will find a workaround.
  • Follower/Following
    I would be really cool to follow your favorite memes posters on dMania and have your own meme feed. Unfortunately if you follow someone on Steem, you will follow him also on Steemit. Most people don't want to see on their Steemit feed a lot of memes. That's why I couldn't add that feature so far. Maybe the Steem API will allow following user per app at some point.
  • dMania token
    Will dMania get it's own SMT token? I have no idea. I need more details about SMT tokens and how they actually work to decide that. Atm everything works fine without a token, so I don't see the need.

Support dMania


dMania has a supporter system similar to @utopian-io. dMania supporters receive 15% of the rewards on dMania. The dMania bot uses the collected Steem Power from supporters to upvote posts on dMania. Memes usually don't receive high rewards from most users. That's why the supporter system is very important to dMania. Most rewards on dMania are generated by dMania supporters. High rewards are important to attract new users. To get more users to dMania and Steem we need more supporters.

To become a dMania supporter, you have to delegate some Steem Power to dMania. The minimum is only 5 Steem Power. The more Steem Power you delegate, the higher your rewards. By delegating Steem Power, you are lending your Steem Power to dMania. The Steem Power still belongs to you.

Supporters

There are already over 100 dMania supporters.

@misterdelegation
@freedom
@lafona-miner
@xeldal
@cnts
@zombee
@mat1973
@raggaemuffin
@whalepunk
@julstamban
@rocketsteem
@free999enigma
@scandinavianlife
@carterx7
@celestal
@theb0red1
@bleepcoin
@earnwithfelix
@nuagnorab
@zirka
and many more...

If you have any questions join our Discord server


Please upvote, post and comment on dMania to support this project. Every single upvote counts. You can contact me on steemit.chat or discord if you find any bugs or if you have ideas for new features. Please resteem and upvote this post and tell everyone you know who likes memes about dMania. Follow @dmania and @zombee to get the latest updates about this project. 




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You have really put hard work. It is informative and must have post for the beginners like me who joined only two weeks ago.
Definitely I am going to use it.

This looks like an awesome idea for an app. I’m going to check it out right now!

That's such an awesome niche for Steem and what a funny url with the lol ending. :D

Is the website open source and if not do you plan to make it so? We could support dMania then sponsored by Utopian. That would be awesome!

I have just posted my first self-made meme via the platform but it doesn't appear in my profile there. Did I do anything wrong?

dMania is not open source atm. I am still not sure if I want to make it open source. I have to think about it.
I know there would be a lot of benefits when I open source it, but it kinda feels like giving my baby up for adoption 😆

If you edit your post on Steemit, it becomes a Steemit post. Steemit posts aren't visible on dMania.

If you edit your post on Steemit, it becomes a Steemit post. Steemit posts aren't visible on dMania.
Why? When I edit my Steepshot, Utopian or DTube post they don't become Steemit posts either. And I assume I still have to pay beneficiary rewards to dMania. So it is kind of rubbing me from what I have signed on to the moment I created the post.

If Steemit posts where visible on dMania, people could avoid paying beneficiaries like everyone else. They could create posts without pictures which would cause problems.
You can edit your title and tags on dMania, but you can't add a description. The first author comment is always sticky at the top and replaces more or less a description.

I don't see any reason why dMania should show posts from other apps. Apps on Steem should be more separated in my opinion.

I never said dMania should show posts from any other platform. That would be just wrong.

But why does dMania kicks out posts posted on dMania, which are inevetible logged in the dmania beneficiary rewards system but are not even displayed on dMania any more?

DTube, Utopian and Steepshot do allow a manual edit after the release and don't exclude the post if it was properly posted via their platforms.

They probably also show posts from Steemit when you tag them with dtube, utopian, steepshot as category. I don't know any way around that.

Steemit changes the app in the metadata if you edit the post. That isn't my fault.

No, they don't show other posts no matter what tags they use. That would be a catastrophe if that would be the case since we get hundreds of Utopian-io tags from Steemit posts every day but luckily we don't have to deal with them because they were not submitted via the platform. And vice versa they don't drop out of their platforms either when edited on Steemit either.

I am not a developer so I have no clue what you have to change but I am 100% certain that it is possible since it works there. :)

Ok I changed it and you can now edit your dMania posts on Steemit. You were probably right, it was too restrictive and other users had the same problem.
Your post is now visible on your dMania profile again.

I upvoted this post because Grumpycat flagged it. Congratulations.

Thank you for giving us the Dmania project.

I hope 2018 brings luck to everyone @zombee

Yes I hope this also

All the best with developing this project and taking it further dude!

I was in a very good mood when reading your post and then all this flagging drama kind of ruined that. That idiot flagging stuff is massively annoying.
Anyway... I am super excited about the level of development planned for dMania. I really hope you will add a feature when you can pre-upload and then schedule your memes being made public. It would certainly save time when I have a very busy day.
Also I've been posting almost daily with my meme posting account @cmmemes ( only original memes btw) and haven't received any "love" from the autobot in a long time and it's a bit discouraging ( I'm hitting the trending page consistently). Any tips? :)
Keep up the good work man!

Thank you guys for doing this and taking your time to develop this project.

I have found my new 9gag place to hang out! Thanks from my heart!

You are welcome 😊

Nice work, but I really miss the categorisation present on every old-school centralised meme-aggregation site... How about implementing dMania tag pages by allowing contributors to choose a tag "extension" for their post?

On Steemit, it would look something like this:

dmania:[page name]

The "dmania:" part should help keep Steemit tidy and separate meme-tags from blog-posts. Who knows: if dMania really takes off, this might be needed someday.

Let's say I want to make a post about cats. While submitting my image, I would be presented with an input box that allows me to choose the dMania page I want to post on (I suggest limiting the number of extension-tags on a single dMania post to one). When I type in "cats", my post gets tagged with "dmania" and "dmania:cats" upon submission, and appears on both dMania's homepage page and its "cats" page, the latter displaying all posts tagged with both "dmania" and "dmania:cats" (and use the post ranking from the "dmania:cats" tag) while the homepage would still list every post with a tagline starting with "dmania" (like it does now, presumably).

But why wouldn't the "cats" page simply display all posts tagged with "dmania:cats"? This way, posts submitted with the category-tag as their primary tag (lacking the "dmania" primary tag) would not be displayed on the tag pages. If it were otherwise, dMania's home page might fall apart: because Steemit categories prioritise posts that list the category first, posts with a tagline starting with "dmania:cats" would get a preferential treatment on the "cats" page and skip the homepage altogether. This would make dMania kinda broken, if you asked me.

Lastly, while this system would also work with a limited number of categories chosen through a drop-down menu, free input seems like a more efficient and decentralised solution. Like Steemit, dMania would display the most popular tags in a sidebar, that would work like the one on Steemit but only display tags starting with "dmania:": another good reason for using a prefix.

Thanks for your great feedback. Atm dMania is still tied to Steemit and most users want the visibility and upvotes from Steemit. That's why users can choose their own tags.
It probably won't stay like that. There are still some technical limitations why dMania can't have it's own tags. For example I can only query the most popular Steem tags. I probably would have to track dMania tags myself or create predefined tags.

For the moment I think dMania is fine like it is. 9GAG for example had millions of users before they added tag pages. I will work on it when there are more users and posts.

wow, memes = money (-: