The few people who follow what is going on in the Steem space and the platforms being developed will no doubt know about Zappl. For those that don't, Zappl is Steem's answer to Twitter. It is a microblogging platform being built on the Steem blockchain and we have had a new teaser today of the UI which looks gorgeous.
I want to dig in a little bit about how Zappl, if marketed correctly could take a huge chunk away from Twitter and be the platform that brings Steem to the masses. From what I see there are 2 key reasons:
Reason 1 :Zappl statistically should attract more users
The single and one way to access content on the Steem blockchain at the moment is on Steemit. Steemit is kind of an all in one platform that allows you to browse around like you're on Reddit and post like your writing on Medium. It is a great platform, personally I love it but it will always be just that. A bit of an all in one platform that does everything just OK.
What Zappl does is bring the Steemit user profiles over to a platform that millions of people already know well and are used it. Why do I think Zappl will be the platform that brings Steem to the mainstream audience? Let look at some statistics to show my point.
First of all let's look at the direct comparison of Reddit and Twitter. They were created around the same time. Reddit was founded in June 2005 and Twitter in March 2006. If we look at both of their usage stats today you will see the clear difference.
Twitter was easy to get and they are quite open about the number of active users the have on their system. They are reporting 313 million.
Reddit is a little more difficult, the only statistic I could find that was close to this which was how many logged in Redditors in a month. There are reporting 3.368 million active logged in users each month.
Now I know these statistics are far from 100% but it is enough of a huge difference to make my point. Through the fact that Zappl is a microblogging platform alone will immediately bring more people in as there is simply more of the world population that will be aware on exactly what to do. Everybody that has used Twitter before will immediately be familiar with Zappl.
I did try to find monthly active users for medium to make it a more thorough comparison however they do not disclose those figures. They have stated that the website gets 30 million unique visitors each month which would still put it well below the figures for Twitter.
Steemit works for me because I am used to Reddit. My partner has an account because I told her to get on it and that Steemit was awesome. Has she used it? No... But I am willing to put money on it that she will if Zappl launched because she would immediately be familiar with it.
Zappl has the potential to target Twitter users and show them there is an equal platform that they can get paid to tweet.
Reason 2: Twitter has become too big for it's niche, Zapple can take advantage of this
Twitter at one point was the main digital square in which everyone with a mobile connected to the internet would meet to discuss and organise. Twitter's growth was huge and eventually they IPO'd in 2013 and issues out shares.
Recently Twitter's user growth has stalled and when you are a huge public company it means the price of shares quickly follow suit. This has resulted in Twitter scrambling around trying to add new features from competitors to keep its users active and keep their share prices high. They are so busy doing this they are now at risk of losing the very sense of what Twitter is, a microblogging platform.
When Zappl launches it will be exactly what it is. It will exist as a microblogging platform and does not need to be anything else. This will attract the hardcore Twitter audience as some will be looking for a answer to Twitter's transformations. What's better is as Zappl grows and inevitably finds itself in Twitter's position of stalled user growth, there is an entire Steem social network of other platforms being built that the users can jump to. Once Steem offers an equivalent of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, it will be much easier to keep active users within the Steem network. Exciting times!!!
So there you have it. I hope this explains why I see Zappl as a key milestone for the Steem community and why we will look back at the history of active users on Steem and see the historic spike of users caused by the launch of Zappl. Call me optimistic but I think Steem has needed a familiar platform like this to grow. A platform that doesn't require you to be able to construct full articles. This will be a platform where you can post just a quick Tweet (or Zapp I suppose?) in a few seconds.
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