Blockchain Word of Mouth Marketing. Introduction to the first review website on the Blockchain

Transcription

1 Blockchain Word of Mouth Marketing Introduction to the first review website on the Blockchain

2 Disclaimer PLEASE READ THIS DISCLAIMER SECTION CAREFULLY. IF YOU ARE IN ANY DOUBT AS TO THE ACTION YOU SHOULD TAKE, YOU SHOULD CONSULT YOUR LEGAL, FINANCIAL, TAX OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVISOR(S). The information set forth below may not be exhaustive and does not imply any elements of a contractual relationship. While we make every effort to ensure that any material in this Introduction is accurate and up to date, such material in no way constitutes the provision of professional advice. BWOMM does not guarantee and accepts no legal liability whatsoever, arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained in this Introduction. Investing contributors and potential BWOMM Token Holders should seek appropriate independent professional advice prior to relying on, or entering into any commitment or transaction, based on material published in this Introduction, which is purely published for reference purposes alone. BWOMM Token offered by BWOMM is not intended to constitute securities in any jurisdiction. This Introduction does not constitute a prospectus or offer document of any sort and is not intended to constitute an offer of securities or a solicitation for investment in securities in any jurisdiction. BWOMM does not provide any opinion on any advice to purchase, sell or otherwise transact with BWOMM Token and the fact of presentation of this Introduction shall not form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract or investment decision. No person is bound to enter into any contract or binding legal commitment in relation to the sale and purchase of BWOMM Token, and no cryptocurrency or other form of payment is to be accepted on the basis of this Introduction. The Smart Contract System concept, the underlying software application and software platform (i.e. the Ethereum blockchain), is still in an early development stage and unproven. There is no warranty or assurance that the process for creating BWOMM Token or the exchange of BWOMM Token based on Smart Contracts will be uninterrupted or error-free and there is an inherent risk that the software could contain defects, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, bugs or viruses causing the complete loss of ETH or BTC contributions and/or BWOMM Token. Additionally, there are other risks associated with your acquisition, storage, transfer and use of BWOMM Token, including those that BWOMM may not be able to anticipate. Such risks may further materialize as unanticipated variations or combinations of the risks set out in the contribution terms of the BWOMM Token sale, colloquially known as Initial Token Offering ( ITO ) by BWOMM.

3 Objective of this Document The objective of this introduction is to give a short overview of the idea behind BWOMM. Therefore, please do not see it as a complete summary of the project. For a complete overview including all features and mechanisms of BWOMM, we would recommend you to read our Whitepaper to be found on

4 Objective of this Document The objective of this introduction is to give a short overview of the idea behind BWOMM. Therefore, please do not see it as a complete summary of the project. For a complete overview including all features and mechanisms of BWOMM, we would recommend you to read our Whitepaper to be found on

5 Current Situation in Online Review Industry Today, we live in an era driven by opinion spamming on the Internet. On review websites for example, we are facing fake reviews (estimated to be around 15 30% ) and adverts aiming to mislead our perception of products and services. Moreover, users provide the main value on major review websites. However, they do not earn any monetary reward for writing reviews etc. BWOMM is created to challenge these issues by building a review website based on the Blockchain

6 BWOMM Concept: Overview Reward everyone's meaningful contribution (reviews, curations etc.) to promote the creation of high quality reviews Allow contributing user profiles to grow a rewardable community status and become a trusted user Establish a democratic community approval process in which (trusted) user assess other users contributions through up- and downvotes Save and make all these information visible on a Blockchain By establishing above mentioned principles BWOMM will become a reliable, independent and self-governing review platform based on the Blockchain

7 BWOMM Concept: A Simplified Example 1. Bob writes a review on BWOMM.io 2. Assuming that Bobs review was helpful and got up-voted by the community. BWOMM.io sends Bob the rewards he earned. 3. Bob is able to spend his rewards in participating restaurants and hotels. 4. Restaurant & hotels can contribute to the system by describing and promoting pictures about their own products and services. 5. They as well can earn rewards once their contributions are considered as helpful by the community 6. Like any other user in the system restaurant & hotels are able to use their rewards for payments. For example, to buy services from BWOMM.io Bob Rewards (2) Contributions (1) BWOMM.io Hotels & Restaurants Whitepaper; 4. BWOMM A next generation review website, P. 5-7

8 BWOMM Concept: Cryptocurrency Model - Referring to Steem.io Our cryptocurrency model contains three cryptos with different functions: 1. BWOMM (BWOM) is a liquid token, which can be exchanged and transferred to others as a payment. User can get BWST through writing helpful reviews or by buying them. 2. BWOMM STATUS (BWST) is a non-liquid token providing a special community status. Users can earn BWST once their reviews got upvoted from the community. The more BWST a user owns the more trusted she/he is. BWST cannot be transferred or bought. 3. BWOMM DOLLAR s (BWD) major purpose is to be a non-volatile medium of payment towards hotels and restaurants. To use BWD the user needs to change his/her earned BWOM to BWD, by buying a Blockchain tracked and fiat based BWD voucher on BWOMM.io. Whitepaper, section; BWOMM tokens, P. 7-8

9 BWOMM Concept: Reward Model - Referring to Steem.io The BWOMM System is planning to yearly create new tokens by an inflation rate of 10%. 65% of the new generated tokens are to be distributed to the reward pool, which is majorly directed to the authors writing reviews (like Bob). These rewards are to be paid in 50% BWOM and 50% BWST. 20% of the new tokens are awarded to curating users. To be paid in BWOM. 15% remain for potential costs of the platform. To be paid in BWOM. Whitepaper; Reward source and distribution, P. 8-9

10 BWOMM Concept: Community Approval Process As described BWST provides a special community status to its holders making them trusted user. Through the up- and downvotes of the user, the BWOMM system stands out the current deceivable one-user, one-vote principle within the online review industry, shifting the power towards the trustable users within the democratic BWOMM community. The higher the community status (BWST), the higher the influence on the ranking through up- and downvotes. Whitepaper, section; BWOMM tokens, P. 7-12

11 BWOMM Concept: Example Including all Tokens 1. Bob writes a review on BWOMM.io 2. Assuming that Bob s review was helpful and got up-voted by the community. BWOMM.io transfers the rewards to the online wallet of Bob in form of 50% BWOM and 50% BWST. 3. Bob is able to spend his rewarded BWOM s in participating hotels or restaurants. To do so Bob needs to changes his BWOMs against a nonvolatile and fiat bound BWD voucher. 4. Restaurant & hotels can contribute to BWOMM by promoting their own products and services. 5. They as well can earn rewards once their contributions are upvoted by the community 6. Like any other user in the system restaurant & hotels are able to use their BWOM rewards for payments, e.g. to buy services from BWOMM.io Bob Rewards (BWOM and BWST) (2) Writes a review (1) BWOMM.io Hotels & Restaurants Whitepaper; 6. Example, P

12 Our Short-Term Goals Currently, we are verifying which of the existing Blockchain platforms fits most to our project requirements. This verifying and electing process will be part of our technical paper to be published soon on Moreover, we are working on a project plan to be published on our website to keep you updated about our reached milestones. Further, we are spreading our BWOM Token around the world, to create a large and international community. Please, keep in mind that our BWOM Token is Ethereum based and will be 1 to 1 converted once we will move to our selected Platform. The other two tokens (BWST and BWD) will be created once the BWOMM review website goes live and the people start to write reviews and receive rewards.

13 Reference Chevalier, Judith & Dina, Mayzlin (2006): The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online BookReviews. Journal of marketing research 43(3) 345. Engel, James F., Kegerreis, Robert J. & Blackwell, Roger D. (1969): Word-of-Mouth Communication by the Innovator, Journal of Marketing Hipp, Ann-Kathrin (2017): Das Geschäft mit den gefälschten Hotelbewertungen, Der Tagesspiegel, Luca M. & Zervas G. (2013): Fake it till you make it: Reputation, competition, and yelp review fraud. Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper (14-006). Iansiti, Marco & Lakhani, Karim R. (2017): The Truth About Blockchain, January February 2017 issue (pp ) of Harvard Business Review. Mukherjee, A., Venkataraman, V., Liu, B., & Glance, N. (2013). What yelp fake review filter might be doing? In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, ICWSM 2013 (pp ). AAAI press. Nanda, Ramana, Robert F. White, and Alexey Tuzikov. "Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets." Harvard Business School Technical Note , November (Revised December 2017.) Steemit, Inc (2017, A): An incentivized, blockchain-based, public content platform. August 2017 Steemit, Inc (2017, B): Smart Media Tokens (SMTs): A Token Protocol for Content Websites, Applications, Online Communities and Guilds Seeking Funding, Monetization and User Growth, August 2017 Smith, Mike D. (2013): Fake reviews plague consumer websites, The Guardian, Streitfeld, David (2011): In a Race to Out-Rave, 5-Star Web Reviews Go for $5, New York Times, Aug, 19, 2011, Sussin J. & Thompson E. (2012): The consequences of fake fans, likes, and reviews on social networks. Gartner, Inc., July 1-7. Yao, Y., Viswanath B., Cryan, J., Zheng, H. & Zhao, B. Y. (2017): Automated Crowdturfing Attacks and Defenses in Online Review Systems, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2017)