Just have both.
They serve different purposes.
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Happy to share bro 
Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making the assertion that any marketing will help core get ‘there’ any faster (it might even slow them down by distraction). My contention is purely that marketing and awareness will help the project with a lot of adoption and side projects, as might industry partnerships and other interesting things that will help SAFE develop a wide base of interested holders, enthusiasts and crypto-community integration. I think we are worse off for existing in isolation than we would be if we were more connected.
Absolutely, but SAFE’s success and resilience/security ultimately depends on the size of its user-base. I agree that post launch SAFE should attract users because it is useful, but if very few people know about it then it will be vulnerable for longer and it will be less interesting as fewer projects will have been built on it. Although SAFE doesn’t really have any direct competition yet I don’t think it does us any favours to be too complacent or make assumptions about adoption from a zero starting point. It feels to me like a wasted opportunity to see so much content wasted by being tucked on this forum (from a marketing pov).
Well, if SAFE works then it will be attacked by a lot of threatened interests imo - both from within crypto and institutional players. It will also take time for word of mouth to spread, but that’s a challenge we could be solving now instead of just hoping to see it solved organically the second it is launched. We could also be getting further ahead on the all the SAFE tubes and SAFE twitter versions etc that would give people more reasons to use it when it launches and help it grow faster.
Well, the thread is dedicated to marketing so I was working under the assumption that MaidSafe wants more marketing and sees the value in it. I do agree completely that SAFE should work without marketing because the utility and uniqueness of it give it a huge edge, but I also think side projects and a big user base at launch give it a much better chance of survival/success. I don’t think we can be too complacent about the ‘competition’. Something like hashgraph might be more hot air than substance (being closed source makes it hard to judge), but there are certainly other ways to scale and create a decentralised net. I would hate to see a worse solution succeed simply because it had much more traction than the better solution and offered enough feature cross over that the truly empowering features on SAFE were lost to the world. I’m yet to find a project that I am convinced by, but that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned that SAFE existing in a vacuum might set it at a disadvantage to another decentralised web project. We all carry a lot of bias and I’m conscious of the fact that we could be wrong to dismiss the potential of other innovators to displace a better solution (assuming that we’re right and SAFE really is the best possible solution.
When IOTA had its first big boom we went from having 5 or 6 of us on slack to having hundreds in the space of a few days. Within that noise the majority were morons with no idea what they were investing in. However it also went from having two side projects to half a dozen within the week. For every cohort of speculators there were a handful more developers and industry folks who connected the project to other things and gave it more credibility. The second time it pumped things went even more crazy, but sure enough, from out the mess came a dozen more projects and partnerships that led to everyone and their dog becoming aware of IOTA and it spiralled into the final pump and major partnership they have today. I’d say those partnership and new developers make their project much stronger and more likely to get somewhere myself, but I guess that’s not a given. I’m not a technological maximalist though. Worse solutions do beat out better tech sometimes.
Growth has a snowballing effect essentially. I guess that’s the main thrust of why I think marketing pre launch is valuable, which is I guess what you are asking here really.
Ha, I like the analogy. I would not want my kids going out into the world without any social capital to draw from. I would expect that to make their lives much harder. It is much easier to achieve great things if you are more connected and less isolated. Money is just money, it’s a tool, nothing more. Social capital is far more precious and valuable really, but sadly the two things are also related, since money/interest do garner more social capital. Rich people tend to have successful kids because they send them to posh schools where they meet other rich and connected people and they have a lot of social capital to draw on. Of course really smart people make it with no help, but I’d rather SAFE had the core strength and the social assistance to help make its success that bit more likely.
I hope that makes my pov a bit clearer. I’m not saying SAFE needs marketing to succeed. I am saying that marketing generally helps with success though. And I am also not saying we should disband the community. I was simply making the suggestion that discourse is not the place to gather your community if you want to take advantage of social capital because no one really knows about this place. I do personally think we would all just post as normal and the community would stay pretty much the same if we all moved to reddit. We’d just have more newcomers in our conversations… which from a marketing perspective is a good thing.
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True, neo. There are certain advantages to not being lumped together with coins and projects in the blockchain ecosystem, which is primarily what Reddit is. Safe Network is and, will be, unique. No reason to chip into SAFE’s well-earned identity by downplaying its uniqueness, even if it is a subtle effect.
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Ah, well I disagree with this so I guess I can see where you are coming from if that is your opinion.
I am simply advocating using reddit instead of discourse. I do not think that kills the community ‘by definition’ since this community is not defined by discourse but rather by the people using it.
Really? I disagree with this and I’m not sure you can so certain about it. I guess the only way to know would be to test it, but my guess is that you would lose a few % at worst and gain a great deal more most likely (I’d be surprised if we lost m/any quality content creators from here tbh, do you really think people like discourse that much?).
I thought I was pretty clear about why I disagree with you here? It creates a clique and locks valuable content away that would otherwise be under the noses of the crypto community at large. I’d be interesting to hear how you think it helps to have a clique forum that exist in relative isolation helps with marketing?
Gosh it really is a genuine question and I don’t feel you’ve answered it at all?! 
As I said, I don’t want to kill the community, I would just rather we used reddit than discourse. I still don’t see how using reddit damages the SAFE project or the community. To me that looks like a very positive move for both the project and the community.
We’re talking at cross purposes but I don’t think this is worth my time to clarify. I’ll come back if it looks like gaining any concensus, but at this point it looks like you’ve failed to make a convincing case to the community which you would have to convince to disband itself.
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Jeepers, you are defensive and putting words in my mouth aren’t you?
I do not want to disband the community. I would like to see the community ported to another piece of forum software. Why do you think that is destroying the community ‘by definition’ as you put it? This community is certainly not defined by discourse (imo).
Anyway, it’s clearly going to be hard to have constructive discussion with you about it, so probably best if I just stop replying.
I think I’ll just walk the walk rather than talking the talk
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My own 2 cents worth is that broad based marketing to the crypto world is only necessary once we have a secure system. Hopefully there are enough devs on board and they are spreading the word.
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I am for running both. I rarely use reddit and see it more as the “look at this new thing” or “ask a question” and less one for development and bouncing around new ideas for say APPs etc. Also does reddit even cultivate a community vibe and I am not talking of a community of fanboys/girls.
Also reddit seems to me to attract the hit-n-run posters which does not help cultivate a community which has been one of the things that has helped support this project. Doesn’t mean there won’t be a community there, but we would not have the one we’ve got today without this forum. (my opinion obviously)
To me reddit has it place in the scheme of things and this forum (whether discourse or other s/w) has its place with plenty of overlap.
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Who said anything about deleting this forum??
This is my home!! Don’t make me homeless again 
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Maidsafe is developing an excellent product. I feel the key is adoption. The more people adopt the technology the faster it will grow. The community engagement program is excellent.
If we see the target of the communication here: we have two. 1. the developers and the community, and 2. the people (there should be focus on converting this population into 1.)
We should have a plan to target the community but equally if not more important we should have a plan to target the general population to want to use the Safe Network. I feel the latter gets less focus. I may be wrong in saying this so i do apologise in advance.
I feel and hope 2018 could be an exciting and interesting journey for Maidsafe. I am glad to be part of this journey. It would be nice to see Safe rock the world.
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I agree with that we should be weary of the false assumption “build it and they will come”. In the history of business, there are many great companies with great innovation with great teams that didn’t go the distance they could’ve gone just because they were operating under that assumption. Maidsafe has the advantage that is building something complex, even perhaps the most complex in this space, which is advantageous when it comes to tech, but a disadvantage when it comes to marketing. As there is nothing you can compare to, nothing to piggyback on, and thus your left with the cost of building awareness. Like bitcoin when it first came out. I am sure litecoin had an easier time explaining itself. Many marketing departments around the world struggle to translate the innovation of the core team into marketing material when its a deep-tech projects. There are books about this specific subject. It is quite difficult. Our marketing should match the level of depth of the tech. Brief videos won’t cut it (still a positive, and should be continued). However, alongside that there should be more partnerships, more events, hackathons etc,. (Maidsafe could already be working on that, but I am just mentioning this in case). University partnerships would be great. Especially since they have many corporate partnerships as well. I am sure other universities would want to see and get into the decentralized internet space, just like MIT with their own decentralized internet project.
All in all, I think we all want to see Maidsafe successful, and we have a great unique diverse community here, and it will be a great loss not to welcome and build on the diversity of thoughts, approaches, ideas. Let’s build on the tension, instead of letting it negate each other’s thoughts.
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The quality and range of the debate on this forum (which is independent, by the way, and not run by MaidSafe so not theirs to close) was the first thing that persuaded me that this project might be onto something. For me and I’d guess many others too it’s definitely a USP and it would be crazy to kill the golden goose. Reddit is not conducive to the sort of long-form threads and debates that work so well here, and creating categories and structure is a pain, so I can’t see how freezing this forum and migrating it to Reddit would work at all, however much this place can sometimes feel a little closed off.
What I do think is needed is a co-ordinated effort to funnel people here from places like Reddit which have more traffic and higher search engine placements, by pinning links, cross-posting threads, reframing arguments to better suit the platform, replicating content etc - the sort of things that happen now but in an ad-hoc kind of way. I suspect this is high on Sarah and Dug’s to-do lists. There should also be a focus on welcoming new members from whichever line of interest (infosec, privacy, crypto, tech) happens to bring them here.
I think that the newer projects get a lot of the attention they do simply because they are new and the crypto crowd are waiting for the inevitable pump and hype, but in most cases it’s pure speculation. I’d be wary of going all-in on attracting speculators as it could easily backfire when the next shiny thing comes along or if things fail to arrive when planned. Attracting new devs is another matter and I think we could be doing much better there.
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@jabba old friend. As I said we are talking at cross purposes. I’m not feeling defensive, but I will explain.
Each time I’ve said ‘this community’ you’ve responded as if I said ‘the SAFEnetwork community’. But I mean the community of this forum, which is the subject of your suggestion (to close this forum).
So I don’t think I’m putting words in your mouth. I think you are just not understanding what I’ve said, which is evident in several places as I said earlier.
This is an interesting Twitter thread. @happybeing seems to have managed to pique Brendan Eich’s (Brave Browser, formerly Mozilla) interest…
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I would have to respectfully disagree. Reddit may be fine for some, but this is one of the best forum platforms I’ve come across. From my perspective, this forum is very accessible, I can’t stand to even look at a nonsensical Reddit thread by comparison to the clean format presented here. I’m a new member, just came on board. It wasn’t the fancy marketing that made me want to get involved with the project, although it helped give some overview. Rather, it was this forum, the github repo, the white papers, and the online presentations/interviews with Mr. Irving and other MaidSafe folks that I found on youtube.
I think some have suggested to just have both. I would agree this is more in line with the SAFE philosophy too. You don’t need to sacrifice one thing for another, just have it all. Let the user decide right?
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^^^^^^^^bump^^^^^^^^
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Well, we have had both for ages and the problem persists.
My “spit balling suggestion” (not an “attempt to convince the community to disband”?!?!?) was in response to Sarah and Traktion’s good points. Reddit is dead and it would be better if there was a lot of activity on there. I don’t see how this community migrates much activity without cutting off the habit we’ve developed for coming here personally.
Meh, I was surprised anyone was keen on the idea tbh. I suspected many people would be defensive of the thing they enjoy (their home) and that bias would make it hard to get the point through, so I should not be surprised that that’s what happened.
From a marketing perspective I think it would do much more good than harm for SAFE, but obviously I’m just one guy and one opinion. All I’ll say is that my money is on Reddit and other more public sources staying dead and sending a poor marketing message until post launch. I’ve been posting here for over 2 years because I have met some cool folks here and I wanted to contribute to the project by helping add more content (an obvious thing to do for a motor mouth like me). My best play here is pretty simple I guess. I’ll migrate to reddit when I get home tomorrow and try to do more good there than I can by just adding to the echo chamber here. I suspect it’ll just be myself and one or two others, but perhaps between us we can make this project look a little less dead to the outside world. It’s a shame not to have more technical and high brow discussions than I can provide though… hopefully riddim or someone more technically literate will join me and post a few more detailed technical discussions for folks to stumble across too.
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My feeling is that until vaults-at-home are available for testing again there won’t be enough pizzazz in the project to attract a fair amount of newbies. So, maybe the concentrated effort to expand interest in SAFE should wait until then. Many people are not interested in or have the patience for a project they view as primarily a work-in-progress. Will be hard to gain “traction” before vaults.
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You probably will do a lot of good and generate some marketing buzz. I was in no way criticizing the idea to use Reddit, I know it is a very popular site where topics can often go viral. I was just pointing out that different people prefer different platforms. Perhaps one way to look at it is to see Reddit as a gateway for casual technophobes or technophiles to get introduced to SAFE. There you introduce the buzz words and basic ideas to get people excited, push them to different blog articles and videos, then send them here for more info and conversation. After spending some time here, they may want to take part in developing apps and join the dev forum. Basically, a three layered approach. Like I said, I’m new and unaware of all that has gone on before so maybe this was the original plan too. However, if there hasn’t been anyone focusing on the Reddit development until now (you) then you will probably make some good progress if you focus your energy on it. For example, I would have never heard about SAFE if it hadn’t been mentioned briefly in a youtube video. Everyone enters the project through a different portal…
Lets all post at least one reply/ post on reddit now
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