Introducing Reveal
A social network is more than just an app: it’s a community of people who make it a part of their lives.
We started our own social network, Reveal, with the (surprisingly radical) belief that this community deserves to truly share in the value of the network we are building together.
We’ve been working on Reveal, and the ideas behind it, for just over a year now, and today we finally feel it’s ready to share with a broader audience.
A New Social Experience
We set out to build a new social network that not only shared value in an innovative way, but also had a beautiful and differentiated social experience that users would love in its own right.
Focused on “Ask Me Anything” content, Reveal lets users ask each other questions, either anonymously or as themselves, and then respond with a quick photo or video answer. We believe that Q&A is an incredibly powerful mechanism for truly getting to know someone — not just where they’re at, or what they’re doing, but who they are.
Our group of beta users, including top social media celebrities like @WeeklyChris and @MeghanMcCarthy, have helped shape Reveal’s rich, creative format, and have found that it’s a great way to gain deeper insight into each user’s unique personality, opinions, and charm.
Recognizing Your Value
But Reveal is not just a new way to connect — it’s an opportunity for people around the world to participate in the tremendous wealth creation that is happening in Silicon Valley right now. It’s a chance to join a community and have your contributions acknowledged with something more than just likes and re-shares. It’s something that has never been done before, and our hope is that it’s the beginning of a paradigm shift toward greater financial recognition for early adopters, content creators and evangelists.
You create a tremendous amount of value for the social networks you contribute to, especially in their early days. The attention that you drive by inviting your friends and posting great content makes the network better for everyone. It makes the network more popular, more engaging and easier to monetize in the future.
However, when it comes time to cash in on that attention, you get cut out. Other social networks are selling your data to advertisers, forcing ads into your feed, and hoarding all of that revenue for themselves. Their founders, employees, and investors are becoming millionaires, or sometimes billionaires, while you get to keep using their product and making them rich.
We think that’s unfair. We value your contributions, and believe that you deserve a financial stake in the network that we’re building together. We also believe you should have the power to decide what data to share with advertisers, and what kind of ads you want to see (if any).
Meet Reveal Coin
Reveal Coin is a powerful new “currency for attention” that challenges the way other social networks do business — and we want you to own a part.
It’s our way of making you an owner in the social network that we’re creating together. Reveal Coin is not just a points system, or a reputation score. It’s an actual cryptocurrency that we’ve built into Reveal, and it’s backed by our future ad revenue.
When we sell ads in the future, advertisers will have to pay using Reveal Coin. This means they will have to buy Reveal Coin from whoever has it (Reveal and our users). Because there is a limited supply of Reveal Coin, the idea is that as the company becomes more successful, and demand for ads increases, the value of the coin increases as well.
Reveal Coin is built using the open source Stellar platform, and we give every user a free wallet to hold their Reveal Coin. Founding Members (those who join in the first year) receive 1,000 Reveal Coin (RVL) just for signing up, and users can earn more Reveal Coin by getting likes on their content and inviting their friends to join the network.
We believe that digital currency has the power to transform social media. Just as mobile-first thinking gave rise to the likes of Snapchat, Instagram and Vine, we believe that “coin-first” thinking will give rise to the next wave of great social networks.
In the future, we’ll use Reveal Coin to reinvent advertising, putting you in control of what data you share and whether you see ads at all. We’ll use it to connect people in new ways, solving problems associated with access and attention for influencers. And eventually, the Reveal Wallet will be the way for millions of people to access cryptocurrency and the future of payments.
Building Reveal Together
We’re excited about the future of Reveal and what we can all build together. This is still just the beginning of our journey and we’d love to hear what you think of our work so far. Your ideas and input are incredibly valuable to us as we build the network.
We’re fortunate to already have the support of an amazing group of people. We want to give a shout-out to the early users of Reveal for helping us learn along the way and build something they love. We also want to thank our investors, including Resolute Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Stanford-StartX Fund, Baroda Ventures, Boost VC, and South Park Ventures, for believing in us and supporting our vision.
Download Reveal so we can reimagine the future of social media together.
- Josh & Matt
