In a Q&A with Piotr Michalak, he mentions his secret to success as higher standards. It’s certain that these “higher standards” influenced ccFound’s claim of being ‘the Google killer’, admittedly a very bold claim. However, there might be some truth in this statement.
ccFound’s ambitious plans reveal a platform that perhaps may not kill Google, but could challenge Google’s standing as a search engine giant. ccFound highlights factors that have been overlooked by Google and other search-related platforms, and it attempts to address them through their decentralized platform.
Existing Issues With The Status Quo
For most people, getting information means to Google whatever they are looking for. Answers will pop up from Wikipedia, Quora, Yahoo Answers, and other platforms. Now, these platforms offer information as individual units, which may not give you a satisfactory answer. In most cases, you may have to conduct in-depth research on a topic before you finally arrive at the answer you were looking for. This serves as the first problem.
The second problem comes in after you have your answer. You may think of the struggle you went through and opt to post it on the internet to serve others with similar challenges. Because of all the stress, you went through and the expenses that came with it, you may need an incentive to upload your findings. Most platforms may not provide such options. Furthermore, others will need to have specific searches to find your data.
So, from the problems mentioned, the current set up has the following challenges:
- Information overload with no systematic way of filtering out unnecessary information for specific searches.
- No remuneration for information providers/No knowledge monetization.
- Inadequate systems in place for conversations around a particular question, i.e., platforms like Wikipedia offer information with no option of discussion or comments on the information provided.
- There is also the problem of language barriers. Some answers are only provided in select languages with platforms unable to scale adequately to meet demand.
- Some search engines such as Quora take their informative work lightly by leaning more on entertainment than actual factual data provision.
The issue of remuneration is quite challenging. It has forced countries such as Australia to formulate laws that protect the knowledge producer. These laws have or had the potential of becoming “Google Killers”, but big tech is quite powerful.
The ccFound Solution
Through its platform, ccFound aims to provide solutions to the numbered problems above. The platform plans to solve the problem of knowledge and wisdom in searches by polling answers based on the people or experts who give the responses. Each response is made scalable through machine translation such that every response is available in every language supported by the platform. The same applies to questions asked on the platform. ccFound projects that their platform will help prevent information overload by providing users with the specific information as requested.
According to CEO, Piotr Michalak, “I have always been involved in information products, selling my courses and learning what problems experts have online. The Internet evolved and embraced attention algorithms which are responsible for why we find YouTube and Facebook addictive. That annoys more and more people and ultimately doesn’t help our species to evolve but instead pushes us backwards. It’s not what its creators meant the Internet to be all about. It was created for communications and quick access to relevant information”
An example of a sales estimate using the ccFound business model | Source
Knowledge Monetization
When you think about it, it is disheartening to earn on platforms like YouTube through ads after you create knowledgeable content. Hours of study and production seem like a waste if you are not motivated to provide knowledge freely. Evidence of the many struggling content producers is the many donation requests that appear during or after the videos on various platforms. ccFound aims to change this through their ccFound economy.
On ccFound, knowledge producers will never have to request donations. The platform, through their economy, will create structures that allow these producers to earn directly from their target audience. Some of the structures set to feature in the platform include:
- Online courses
- Live training
- Paid Webinars
- Consultations
- Closed group discussions
- Report writing and analysis
- E-books and audiobooks
These structures give freedom to the knowledge generators to creatively disseminate in a manner that also makes them earn decent wages for the services they provide.
One of the key advantages that are likely to come from the success of ccFound is uninterrupted information dissemination. Most videos on platforms such as YouTube are monetized to support the content producers. Monetization is in the form of ads, which can ruin the whole experience, especially when the ads fall amid the video.
With ccFound, the producers earn directly and indirectly from the knowledge they disseminate, therefore, they have an incentive to produce uninterrupted content. Producers in the platform will earn via CC tokens and tokends.
ccFound Seems Intent on Making a Real Impact
Taking the Australian case as an example, we see the need for a platform such as ccFound. Journalists take in information from various sources and pass it on as knowledge to the rest of the world via traditional and digital print. Digital print is usually hosted in news websites, but it also finds its way in social media platforms, such as Facebook. The social media giant bullied its way through legislation that proposed to have journalists compensated for their stories published on the platform.
“Past was about information. The present is about knowledge. Future is about wisdom.”?—?Piotr Michalak, CEO, ccFound.
With ccFound, journalists and other professionals can publish work on the platform with assured fair compensation via CC tokens. ccFound is run on the principles of Blockchain, i.e., decentralization, meaning that the platform will never hold as much power over its users such as Facebook and other centralized platforms do.
There is also the possibility of collaboration over various projects on the platform. Creative minds may decide to work over research or consult over various professional challenges. In as much as there are existing collaborative platforms, none offers such a widespread solution as ccFound would offer. We may likely see:
- Journalists collaborate over stories globally
- Doctors collaborate for research on emerging diseases
- Engineers consult on structures
- Musicians collaborate to offer masterclasses
Many more professionals will find the platform useful for individual and collaborative purposes.
The platform will also offer support for professionals by creating a recruiting platform. Organizations can then use the platform as a pool to source professionals that may fit into their setup.
Upcoming ICO
The ccFound ICO is planned to go live in the second half of April. Participation can take place via the following link. Payment is also possible through cryptocurrency and fiat. After payment, users will own tokens that can be used to generate tokends. Tokends are generated from the commission charged every time a sale is made on ccFOUND platform, including paid questions and information products. The tokends will act as a way for both ccFound and its users to generate income.
ccFound is on the verge of ushering in a new age of search engines. If executed to perfection, we will likely see a new age of knowledge dissemination.
More information on ccFound can be found via the following links:
Website | Twitter | Medium | Whitepaper
Disclaimer: Please only take this information as my OWN opinion and should not be regarded as financial advice in any situation. Please remember to DYOR before making any decisions.
>? Hi, my name’s Sal.
If you found this article useful and would like to view my other work please be sure to clap and follow me on Medium and LinkedIn!??
