Sportstalksocial. What could the roadmap be?

This is just a personal brainstorm about the possibilities for the sportstalksocial tribe and is in no way a plan from the team running that project. Just me thinking about a way forward for the project if I had the lead on it. None of the following is a critique of the team and work that has been done to date but is an external view of where I feel that it sits right now.

What is the purpose of sportstalk?

Sportstalksocial.com is a web3 site built onto the hive blockchain which gives people the space to analyze and discuss sports related topics. A place where everybody can share their opinions on sports without needing to build their own site or become a professional writer.

Content has the possibility of being rewarded by the other users of the site and the goal is to have a thriving social site where people can get involved in the discussions.

Good content should be moderated to the front of the site and rewarded accordingly. Web3 will give users the chance to decentralize sports journalism and create new earning opportunities.

With the majority of the world having sports in one form or another there is huge scope to build a web3 based site and provide the resources for every person to have their say and create new opportunities.

Target market?

Web3 is blockchain based and as such more appealing to a younger audience. While sports has no demographic anymore as a whole it is so varied that each sports topic would need to be analyzed separately.

To begin building a web3 sports based content site the first target market would need to be computer savvy and have an adventurous mindset. This would seem to fit the 18 to 35 year old profile to begin while ease of use would need to be built upon to target the next bracket generationally.

We know that building on blockchain creates a lot more barriers to entry than traditional social media where more tools exist to smooth user experience. These will come in time but we need to plan for what is there right now until these can be built or provided.

Where is Sportstalk as a platform right now?

For this we would need to take a more critical look at what has been built to date and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the platform.

SWOT Analysis:

Result of analysis:

The result is that the project has huge potential for growth in my opinion but has stagnated since it’s inception. The issues with token distribution from an early day and the link up with actifit has led to poor quality content and a lack of effort.

While sports has a huge area to focus on for a target market, with the site being web3 based it adds more difficulty to attract and retain users with the lack of marketing leading it to stagnate and become a token printing site more than a social one.

This can all still be improved as the user base is small and the same potential remains as it did on day one if a clear and progressive roadmap is put into place and acted upon. It would need the buy in of the tribe owner and a dedicated group of stakeholders willing to build the site into a thriving and profitable entity from where it currently sits.

I feel that the people are there to do this if the leaders can make that plan and get the buy in from the community to push forward.

Potential Roadmap.

• Ad revenue.

While the numbers would be small in the beginning, by using a provider like coinzilla there is very little work to setting them up and the results are instant. Your site begins to earn in Bitcoin which can then be used to improve the tribe.

You could even make a split from the ad revenue if you wanted to,

50% for buy / burn
30% development funds
20% Promotion and marketing.

I would go with a model like this as earning ad revenue gives incentive to market the site and bring more views back to it. People know that if they can add more views and clicks to sportstalk then their share will increase in value over time which is a great incentive. You can run competitions to incentivise sharing content on other sites and even partner with a project like @poshbot and pay users who bring the most value back to the site with their content.

• Content moderation.

Unfortunately looking at the trending page of sportstalk is quite depressing at the moment with the first ten posts being,

Two curation reports by sportstalk.
Three low quality efforts from the same user with a large self vote which is the biggest on the post.
Two actifit reports.
Three sort of sports related posts.

Zero interesting or high quality posts that I would share to my twitter or facebook feed for others to read. Nothing that would interest my friends in the slightest or that would get them to click a link back t the main site.

Now I’m sure that there are quality posts being written on the site and that there are lots of interesting discussions to be had about them. For me quality is subjective and if a post is 10 lines long with 50 comments it is just as good as an essay with 10 comments. But if users come to the site and see these, it is not an attractive brand message to have.

For me I would have to cut or restructure the partnership with @actifit. As much as I love the app itself its content is very low quality and swamps the site so that real content doesn’t get seen. Maybe there is a better way to reward actifit in sports other than just through posting and earning rewards?

I would then pick ten strong and trustworthy users. Give them a large delegation and clear instructions on how and where to curate. No self-voting, one covers golf/cricket feeds, another covers football and rewards the users who are creating the best content. Showcase their work by curating it properly and improving the visuals of the site as well as downvote irrelevant or spam posts. There would be a lot of tantrums but it is healthier in the long run to have the rewards in the best hands for long term growth.

We have seen the damage it can do to a system where large amounts are in the wrong ones. If you could get rid of the self voting option even better.

• Onboarding.

To increase the userbase you will need to go out and get more users. The good news is that there are millions of them out there. The bad news is that it is hard for a newbie to join a tribe. The leo tribe have made great strides lately with new and easier onboarding options. For me this would be a priority going forward as if you can grow in price and popularity you need to be able to scale onboarding to match and make it as simple as possible. People don’t like hurdles so they need to be taken down in advance.

Facebook, twitter, or google log in options. Maybe email sign up or lite accounts. The easier that you can make the process the better.

• Marketing

This would need to be tied in to revenue as there is little point in putting the time and energy to try and market the site when it doesn’t create any revenue. Time is valuable and needs to be treated as such. If you expect users to go out and try to bring people back with them there needs to be a plan for it. That should be to earn from their attention and to hopefully retain it over time.

Create twitter and facebook accounts to increase your online presence and keep expanding your reach every day.

This all leads to more revenue from the ads and more development for the tribe. A positive growth cycle. The more you grow and develop, the easier it will be to attract more attention to the project and further increase its attractiveness.

• Partnerships.

There are lots of other teams building projects on hive right now and lots of interesting ways that we could collaborate from the sports tribe. I would be looking at games like @rabona and @dcity.

Gaming platforms like Kryptogamers. It would be great to game using the sports token rather than hive which is more valuable and could attract a lot more traffic to their platform.

Businesses like hivepay.io which could be the start of a marketplace for sports related material or just to buy sports tokens directly from the site for people who don’t want to use exchanges.
External sports groups or content sites to bring more users in.

Sporting organisations that would be interested in working with the site to expand their visibility and online presence.

@poshbot for marketing purposes and about 20 more groups if you have the creativity to build long term and expand the offering.

Just some ideas off the top of my head.

• Roadmap

All of this leads to one thing. A clear vision for the future and a plan to get there. This calls for a full brainstorm of the sports team and community to see where the project needs to go and what needs to be done to get there step by step.

The order that you do things in is very important as some stages will be of no use until the previous one has been accomplished. Start with the easiest one first and build from there.

Summary

I hope that nobody reads this and thinks that I am being negative towards the sportstalk community and creators. That is the least of my intentions. Instead it was done as a critical review of progress which does not always look the best as you have to think about the worst aspects of the project as well.

There has been some great work done by a lot of individuals to the site since its inception which is very impressive. These are just my personal thoughts on the project and a look at how I would try to progress it going forward to build a stronger and more sustainable business that can become something much better.

Feedback is highly encouraged to my review and who knows what might come out of it over time. Plans start with ideas and we have some great minds on both hive and sportstalk so why not put them to use.