i hope you guys can release a new alpha demo video in the coming days cos that vancouver presentation was a disaster. full of bugs, hardly anything worked.
It was not that bad. I know how tricky it is to show working demo of early version of any non-trivial piece of software. Dev handled all the issues very well, kudos! On the other hand I can imagine how much effort production version can take. Most optimistically 2017 might be that year. I'd like to see more competing projects in this area, this sea can take more than just two fishes (Synereo and Steem).
I believe the market is huge in this area and even Steemit is still the only active one till date because Synereo is not active yet and there is a new project on the block PostBase. Hope one of them truly get this right because I don't see the Steemit model being sustainable on the long run because the distribution seems rigged
Distribution was misleadingly 'rigged' to a degree yes but Steemit's fundamental problem is that it is not economically viable at all. They have no business model. They are diluting Steem holders at like 0.2% a day to fund content creators.
So they are attracting users by diluting speculators and hoping those user numbers will consistently attract more speculators... But without a plan/model for monetising/generating income from users it's just a ponzi that will/is declining as the speculators dry up.
(Even looking at Redditesque sites that do have revenue, paying users for content is not feasible and Reddit in particular is still in the red, costs more to run than they earn, without paying for content.)
The Synereo model is slightly more plausible, directing advertising revenue to FB type users means users could get up to circa $50 per annum sustainably. However given the way they conducted their most recent funding round, my expectations for this project and the people involved are much lower too.
You are right that Synereo needs to address the distribution issues. This is clear, I would say the sooner the better. I am like many who want to invest but cannot if this is not addressed now.
I do hold the team in high regard. I think they are bright and have the right intentions. Also think if they were not doing this second funding now the project would die. How could it last with a pathetic 120k in funding from original ICO. I actually think this is smart to do.