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Yours.org is dead. Bit.sv has dried up. Powpress has just launched, and now Bitpost is here. Bitpost is yet another attempt at filling the gaping blogging hole that Bitcoin SV has had for quite some time now.
Aaron Russell aka Libs is taking a different approach than Yours and Bit.sv by integrating his own Paypresto, a web widget where users can pay for services with any* Bitcoin wallet.
Previous blogging sites had implemented their own proprietary wallet, adding another hoop for users to jump through to sign up for a Bitcoin SV application. Obtaining Bitcoin is difficult enough in the first place and asking users to fund another wallet in the process is bound to lose potential creators.
Upon signing up with a username and password, users can immediately publish an article, paste code snippets, or upload any file (i.e. images, etc.). Bitpost appears to be a natural progression of Libs’ previous work on Proxypay and Bitpaste.
When ready to publish, users can choose to utilize a paywall, add a configurable tip jar, use various encryption schemes and an optional to put the data on-chain. All these options are welcome and allow the user to customize their monetization schemes and control how it is consumed.
The on-chain option is nice as we are seeing users having to migrate their old articles from Yours before it is lost forever. The recent emergence of Powpress (while quite slick) does not solve this issue at this time as the author still has to trust that a single server will be up and running at some point in the future to be able to retrieve the content.
I particularly find the explicit code snippet option interesting as a potential revenue stream for developers. I have been using BitcoinFiles to upload code samples from my development tutorials which works great at the moment for public-facing files.
Given the popularity and over-whelming of sites like StackOverflow, w3schools, and various coding forums, Bitpost can incentivize a much-needed market around providing and monetizing code solutions.
Bitpost is the very first external adopter of the newly released Bitfeed by unwriter. Bitfeed is a syndication format for sharing data in Bitcoin transaction format between applications, similar to RSS. Once tools are built to consume Bitfeeds, then other applications can integrate and subscribe to Bitpost feeds from Day 1.
A couple of features coming ‘soon’ to Bitpost are commenting on posts and a means to earn from curation. Both concepts are issues that the BSV ecosystem has not quite figured out yet.
Notice to Bitcoin projects:
We are not in the comment section business. We are in the video business. We are seeking a replacement for comments such as PowPing, Metalens, Twetch or anything else.
Migrating in about a month. Please reach out with any proposal for plug in.
— Streamanity NFT (@Streamanity) August 2, 2020
I am looking forward to how Libs will address this, as additional methods to earn Bitcoin without necessarily having to own some first are always welcome.
In conclusion, Libs with Bitpost looks to have learned from the pitfalls of previous attempts at blogging applications on BSV. He has built on his previous ideas by adding various customization options to satisfy a multitude of content creators. Content can be posted for free off-chain, or behind encrypted paywalls on-chain. Check out Bitpost.app today and start earning!