Very interesting project, we need as much competition in this space as possible. Being on the Eth blockchain means that they could implement their own points system that behaves similar to STEEM and that could gain its own monetary value. This monetary value could even be used to buy the ETH necessary to pay fees.
The appearance of any kind of fee will negatively impact how users behave. This is especially true for voting. As we know from Steem, we pay people to vote rather than expecting voters to pay producers.
The second major challenge comes with performance, the Akasha DAPP will be competing with all other DAPPs for a share of the 20-30 tps that Eth has demonstrated on their test net. I am sure performance will increase and may be able to hit the 250 tps required for reddit scale. Social media transactions will be competing with financial transactions which will bid up the cost of both.
Their roadmap has them 1 year behind Steem, which is an eternity when it comes to social media network effect building.
The main thing I think we can learn from them is copying some of their marketing strategy. I am interested in hearing what others think of their approach and what we can learn from it.
I like their focus on how the blockchain can provide censorship resistant record of content.
We can learn from this point and make sure it comes across in the steemit messaging.
We all take the blockchain for granted, but for new non-crypto users this is a powerful concept, and one that organisations that value truth will find very compelling - wikileaks for example.
Looks like their marketing is aiming for the millenial generation and their interest in disruptive tech as a means of widening the divide between themselves and the institutional systems whose trust is all but shattered by the onslaught of citizen journalism and commentary.
I would love steem to take this route but am not sure how the community would feel about it. I say we should be proud and push the disruption card out on the table too.
I agree, fees are annoying and in my opinion are a weakness of bitcoin, etc. Traction to market of all cryptocurrency l will increase as we solve this problem. See http://k0in.com/fees.txt
My first impression of AKASHA is that steemit was first. I love the name though. Their premise is similar to steemit--an open place to share.