I see the acceptance of Maidsafe by the average person to be the biggest marketing hurdle.
Regular folks who willingly give their private data and information to companies like Facebook and Google will have no comprehension of what a decentralised Internet is and what the benefits are IMHO and some of those that do understand wont care…just yesterday I was having an argument with a work mate about Australian Metadata retention, he was basically saying he was for it because what we do online is our own problem and we should expect to be monitored and that if it stops one single pedo or one terrorist than it is worth it.
Bitcoin is the perfect example where outside of tech and finance circles most people have no idea what it is.
Compare that to an iPhone, Facebook or the Google search engine. Everyone knows what these things are, everyone can see the value and everyone uses those things daily.
I guess it’s up to all of us to come up with innovative ways to onboard the millions of users, farmers. Having great applications, and powerful incentives for sharing them is my guess.
One area the tech giants are weak, they don’t spread the wealth around, it’s very concentrated. This might be our opportunity to differentiate ourselves, spreading the wealth around. Saying that, just the fact that people will have somewhere secure to store data is a massive incentive in itself.
But I suppose that is my point. For many people, they believe storing their current orthodox methods of data storage is already secure. How do we change this for average Joe? Or can it even be changed?
I suppose one way to answer my own question. Marketing Maidsafe to Australians at the moment would be pretty easy considering the whole metadata retention thing AUSTRALIA: Metadata retention
Maidsafe are the inventors of the technology and are effectively handing over ownership of that technology to the world.
Maidsafe is a company based out of Troon in Scotland and after launch, will slot into the role of a POD doing core development and competing for SAFEcoin alongside other POD’s
SAFE Network is the correct description of the technology/network and the one used for marketing going forward.
Apps are how the technology will get taken up…something as simple as secure messaging will be huge…even government departments want the ability to hide from their own spooks.
And consider people from countries like China, where I believe most people are aware the internet is censored big time. The average person might care a lot more about it there.
Also, I know plenty of people who regularly use Torrents to download movies and series without having any clue what the bittorrent protocol is or how it works. So it’s really about offering good and easy to use services. SAFE will be quite user friendly.
You don’t even have to market the safenetwork barely. The web has problems, people see those problems. Oh no my password or this or that got hacked! My favorite website was taken down! Etc etc. that’s when you suggest the safenetwork. I don’t have those problems anymore, here check out this website and download the client the rest is self explanatory (thanks to maidsafe the company putting in a ton of thought into making this beautiful, shiny, and easy to use)
I’ll echo @goindeep 's concerns that how plain jane/joe first perceives this technology will probably be odd. Not only will they have the hurdle of understanding the technology, but one of the first apps that gains the world’s attention will likely be extremely useful for the criminal element. Of course, the network is a tool and it will be used by folks with a variety of pure and impure intents, but I think it is important to understand this first-run experience and work on ways to preemptively prepare people for the technology. People will first hear about the network in the context of which it is used, probably not by using it first themselves.
One thing that I don’t hear mentioned a lot of is the psychological uncertainty of storing other people’s files. Are they pictures from a wedding? Or something illegal in your country?
I’m not saying any of these issues are deal breaker, but I know these questions will come up and will be posed to both app developers and the fine folks in Troon. It can all likely be countered with a 2 sentence FAQ section
When you offer the unused sections of your hard drive to store data for the network, you are not storing actual pictures or complete files. Each file is split into encrypted chunks and those chunks are then sent out all over the network. What you will be storing on your actual hard drive will be an encrypted piece(s) of a file. You will have no idea what the file is or who it belongs to.
Even so, people may be worried about it. My sister was when I explained the SAFE network. She was concerned about potentially storing data of terrorists on her system. She’s an attorney in her late twenties. I think she was mostly concerned with the moral aspect of supporting a network like SAFE that provides anonymity and may put criminals far from the reach of the law.
I dont know if it will happen this way, but with SAFE being a browser plugin…it should just be like any other app experience i.e a new secure messaging app is available on Firefox and you install it like any other and think no more about the underlying network than you do with the current internet.
I would assume marketplace.firefox.com has some control over what gets listed so wouldn’t expect anything too wild on there…and SAFE reputation would built initially via these official browser channels I would expect.
I would think only farmers would be delving into the tech side…so certainly attracting that group is a challenge, but one that Bitcoin has paved the way for somewhat.
You could also be storing info that could save millions of lives that an govt entity or otherwise wouldn’t want the general public to have. That argument swings both ways.
Never get philosophical when you are trying to sell something. Go to the tangible and immediate rewards that one can get from what you are selling and that is not available anywhere else.
Nobody really gives a crap about rights and freedom. Really nobody, except idealists and nerds.
If we want to appeal to the masses, focus to how this will fill their stomachs, how much money they will save money and how easy their lives with become.
If you want to secure and free the world, you must do it surreptitiously selling its usefulness, not its ideals.
Use the idealist speech sparingly to the idealists only.
The main selling points that will get immediately to the laymen are:
It is like Dropbox, but better
No more leaks, hacking will become obsolete.
Forget about doing backups, no more corrupted or lost files.
It is fully decentralized which means it is safe from market failure: Dropbox and google may someday be bankrupt, that is impossible with MaidSafe.
No more DDoSes, the more popular, the faster the internet.
Once you get them nodding, you got a new adopter who will see why it is so awesomely revolutionary.
The Privacy is a plus.
