The popularity of FriendTech is due to its cleverly avoiding these social product traps.

FriendTech's popularity stems from its ability to cleverly avoid social product traps.

Author: @theNextDAO Core Contributor @_0x Sea_; Source: Twitter @theNextDAO

FriendTech is still fermenting. In just two weeks, the protocol (the project party) has captured a high value, and even the on-chain EMV robot has made a lot of money. Here are some of my thoughts on this product:

In 2021, a friend and I were ready to create a similar product, which is the web3 social token direction. As PMs and entrepreneurs with social backgrounds, our starting point was simple – everyone is unique (Non-Fungible People) and will create a lot of value for the whole society/community.

In our life journey, we will encounter some important people, including your parents, your enlightening teachers, a teacher who helps you establish the correct world/values, leaders in your career, investors and partners on your entrepreneurial journey, friends who appreciate your talents in certain areas… If someone wants to issue their own “life token,” these important people are your original shareholders, they should hold shares of your life, and enjoy the rewards of your later success, achievements, and rising “stock price.” This aligns with my research and focus on people.

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Following this line of thinking, I prepared a complete PRD. But there was one key question that was not clear – how to price each person’s token? How to constrain issuers from empowering tokens? How to let tokens capture the social value that this person truly creates (similar to the problem RAW currently faces)? If not handled well, there will be a lot of price manipulation and rugs.

And people are complex creatures, and human nature is not to be challenged. We didn’t have a good solution to these problems, so the idea was put on hold and not pushed forward.

Looking at FriendTech again, the project party actually cleverly bypassed some of these problems

First, it doesn’t really let every KOL “issue” their own token. All buying and selling is priced in ETH, not platform tokens or KOL-issued tokens. This greatly reduces the user’s understanding and cognitive threshold, without a bewildering array of tickers or the need to deal with complex market value management.

From the current product design, FriendTech is not really trying to solve the “social” or “community” problems (pain points). As mentioned in the previous tweet, FriendTech does not have the accumulation of social relationships, the accumulation of content, and cannot support high-value discussions and exchanges. One confusing aspect of social products is that many people think social is easy to do, but in fact, social is one of the most difficult and has one of the lowest success rates in the entrepreneurial industry.

Due to the high migration cost of social relationships, FriendTech itself is not an independent social product. The relationship between FriendTech and ? is similar to the relationship between “buying and selling slaves” and the “Kaixin” platform. FriendTech just pretends to be social, uses people as NFT speculation carriers, utilizes the mentality of “people are monkeys looking for social status”, forms a dissemination chain based on ? platform, and mobilizes the psychological expectation of points ➞ airdrop.

Your pricing and profit on FriendTech are the social capital you gain from participating in this game process. FriendTech makes you mistakenly believe that the value of your FriendTech room is the value of your interpersonal relationships. This is a trap. It is not a social network.

Regarding social status and social capital, I will share another article for further analysis. Those interested in social networks can read it carefully.

If FriendTech is considered successful, it is because it breaks free from the “trap” of social products and focuses on transactions and speculation. Based on its product positioning, it is also a simple and crude beauty.

Is it possible for this product to seriously iterate and truly develop into a social network? I think the possibility is very small – human nature is not easily challenged. Most likely, it will end up in chaos.

Attached is the mechanism analysis of FriendTech previously written by @_0x Sea_

If various JPEG NFTs (objects) can be speculated, can each unique individual (Non-Fungible People) also be priced? That’s what FriendTech is doing, pricing and trading each person in a social way.

The gameplay is simple: everyone’s initial pricing is the same, and as more people buy (shares have no limit), the price goes up. Conversely, if the number of holders decreases (selling), the price goes down.

It’s somewhat similar to buying and selling friends on Kaixin.com back in the day. When you and others buy a big V (influencer), the remaining process becomes a dynamic game, and the value of the last person to sell becomes zero.

The profit of holders comes from buying low and selling high;

KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) profit from a 5% commission split during the buying and selling process, similar to the “royalties” of NFT projects;

The profit of the FriendTech platform also comes from a 5% commission on each transaction.

We can conclude that the core gameplay of the product revolves around trading, rather than genuinely aiming to be social. This product has a high degree of speculation and is prone to triggering FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and spread. The number of active addresses reached 44k last week, and after the announcement of LianGuairadigm investment today, the data has reached a new high. If we look at it from the perspective of a typical social product architecture, FriendTech lacks the accumulation of social relationships, lacks content accumulation, and cannot support high-value discussions and exchanges.

After purchasing and unlocking a room, you cannot see the comments of other holders, you can only see the comments of KOLs and yourself. This is similar to the logic of WeChat Moments, where you cannot see comments from non-friends.

Who is suitable to play this game?

Those who want to leave interaction records on the Base Chain and FriendTech and receive airdrops – well, first use offline points to attract users to participate. LianGuairadigm is very familiar with this;

Those who have a certain number of fans and want to profit from them – KOLs can use alternate accounts to buy multiple shares in advance. Insider trading has never been easier;

Those who have an eye for discovering potential KOLs and want to be the first to buy in – talent scouts, someone has already developed a bot to monitor the entry of major KOLs;

I just enjoy socializing and trying out various new apps, but the product is still relatively rough.

Who is not suitable to play this game?

If you want to seriously build a fan community and bring value to fans, there are many better products to choose from;

If you want to join the community of influencers and interact with others, as mentioned above, this platform cannot support high-value communication. Currently, an invitation code is required to use it.

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