This is my response to the Taggr critics. If you don't know what Taggr is, Taggr is a real Web3 social media platform that I use every single day that is 100% on chain, where you can get the social media experience you've been craving. There are even free invite codes floating around, so you can join and try the platform totally for free. Then, if you want to keep posting consistently, it costs something like $10 to make around 500 posts. That small cost stops all the spammers and the scammers and all the disgusting stuff that happens on other social media platforms, and it gives you real ownership.
The problem with the other platforms, even X, is that you post and you give and you give and you give, and they hold all the ownership. It's centralized and it's always out of your control. You can have the illusion for the moment that one platform or another is better, but the fact is you have no ownership. The promise of Web3, which in my view can only be delivered fully on chain, built on Internet Computer Protocol, is that you actually have a chance with the tokens like you do on Taggr, where you can buy the token and that gives you a share of the profits.
Taggr is a profitable business system, which is incredible, and it's fully on chain. By holding the Taggr tokens, you actually get paid a share of the business, a share of the profit it makes every week. I've got about 0.37% of the tokens right now and I'm still accumulating more. I've never sold any of the Taggr I've bought and that I've been minted, because to me this is real social media. To me this is amazing. Taggr is my second biggest holding after ICP, and this is one of the few projects that Dominic Williams actually shouted out. The single developer who coded and built Taggr could be the Satoshi Nakamoto of Web3 social media. This is by far one of the most amazing applications on DFINITY's tech, because it was built by a single developer and it has been running for three years.
The criticism, and the real reason people stay away
And yet, look at the things people say. Stefan B. made a post on X about why people in the ecosystem seem to have so little interest in Taggr. The short answer, in my experience, is that people like to be victims. People are in the habit of complaining and saying they want something, and most people are not in the habit of actually getting what they want and enjoying it. And if they do get what they want, they just push the goalposts down slightly further and become miserable again.
People say they want to stop being censored on social media. People say they want to stop getting ripped off and having all these bots. The user experience on Taggr, it feels like using social media on Facebook back when you first started, when you were just hanging out with your friends and posting. It was a great experience. Then Facebook absolutely ruined everything with the centralization, with the censorship, with the algorithm, the shadow banning. And all of us who first got on Facebook in 2005 got nothing from Facebook becoming very profitable. On Taggr, in my opinion, if this blows up, you can buy the tokens and your value will go up with it. And if it doesn't work out, you can buy the tokens and go to zero with them too. I'm sharing my own experience here, not financial advice.
"New social networks are too difficult to use" is an excuse
I'm literally just reading through the comments people wrote. One says it's very difficult to manage and use new social networks. That, to me, is absolute garbage. That is an excuse. How many of you signed up on TikTok in the last couple of years? You literally clicked a few buttons, signed up, and started using it. It is not very difficult to manage and use new social networks. What is difficult is to get out of your own mindset and your own habits. That is difficult, and that is not something you need a new social network to fix. It's difficult for people who just want to sit where they're at and complain about the state of the world, because if you actually take some action and change, things get better.
I'm always joining and trying new things. That's how I'm always on the cutting edge of what's going on, that's how I always find things early, and that's why I was on Facebook in 2005 instead of 2015. So this "it's too hard" line is an excuse people make. People sit in the same spot and keep watching little numbers next to a graph, and instead of trying something new, they complain about what they're using. Yes, institutions are likely to onboard via the masses eventually, but again, that's a victim mindset right there: "I'm just going to sit here and complain about how life is, and it's so hard, and it's so difficult." No, it's not. It was easy to use Taggr. It was easy to start posting on there. It was easy to sign up to TikTok. It was easy to make a second X account.
What's difficult is when you make a whole bunch of these things and don't choose carefully where to put your time. Everybody dumping their time and energy, as I've done over the last year into posting on X, is getting ripped off. Your time and energy is being sucked off of you, and what are you getting in return? Little numbers next to a little bar chart, little hearts. In most cases, you are getting no money. And you're getting an algorithm that is heavily influenced by bots and pushed by people often trying to sell you crap and feed you disgusting information, like all these fraudulent junk coins. To me, it's difficult to keep using the same stuff you've used over and over again. For me, it became difficult to keep using X as a regular user. I got so disgusted scrolling the feed and seeing the absolute junk that I didn't even want to show up there as a consumer.
And here's the craziest thing: we don't even need Taggr to have huge adoption. The craziest thing you can observe in yourself is how you think you want something better, but somebody puts it right in front of you and you go, "Oh no, I don't want that. I don't actually want that." When I'm sober, ten years into Alcoholics Anonymous, and people around me complain endlessly about their lives, some of my friends and family members complain endlessly, and I'm like, you need to stop drinking and go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and all the stuff you're complaining about will get better. "Well, I can't," and the excuses come up. It's like you don't want a better life when a better life is in arm's reach. You could literally just stick your hand out, get the phone out of your pocket, call the helpline, look up a meeting, and go. The comments on Taggr are the same thing: this is what many people think but didn't say.
"The rewards were sliced into oblivion"
Another comment says the rewards were sliced into oblivion, so it doesn't really make it appealing to invest time in at this point, and the UI and UX need massive improvement. I mean, you don't get a thing for posting on X. You get nothing. You never get anything for posting on X, unless you're one of those creators getting five-plus million impressions, and the person complaining does not fall into that category. He's complaining that the rewards are too low on Taggr, but he posts on X and gets nothing except a little number that says people saw it. How many real people actually saw it? Does it matter if someone sees your post flying through a newsfeed at a hundred miles an hour?
What does the UI supposedly need? A little bar chart where you can see how many people saw your posts, so you can feel like what you shared mattered. But if what you shared doesn't matter in the first place, then it doesn't matter how many people saw it. And if what you shared was something you needed to say, something you had fun creating and made because you wanted to, then it also doesn't matter how many people see it, because it was fun to give. People are stuck on platforms like X where it's all circle-jerking and doing anything to get your follower count up. How do I know? Because this is exactly what I've been in.
I remember yesterday thinking, why am I looking at my stupid X follower count when I have hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube and I get thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue? I don't get a thing from posting on X. Why am I taking the time to upload videos on X when X clearly doesn't care what I'm posting? The algorithm doesn't give me a fair shot, because there are all these other people cheating and exploiting it and saying anything to get followers. And X doesn't care about videos being posted to the platform either, it's mainly a text platform. And if you want a text platform, Taggr is a far superior experience. You're nitpicking like an unbeliever when you say, "Well, it needs a better UI." Why? It's a fine UI. It's effective. Do you remember how bad the Facebook UI was? And these are people who are in crypto, hyped up on ICP, in Web3. You'd think these would be the exact people Taggr is perfect for. If you want to go deeper on why I believe the tokens matter so much, that's the same thing I get into in why ICP has the best tokenomics in crypto.
The numbers on X are useless to me
People make arbitrary excuses, like "there's no point putting time into it." But you see these little numbers and you think that means your posts are reaching people and are important, so you think it's worth your time. I get tens of thousands of impressions every day on X. They're useless to me. Hardly anyone has ever scheduled a one-on-one call because of X. Hardly anyone has done anything meaningful with me through it. About 99% of the people who book a call or come find me found me on YouTube, not on X. X is almost totally useless to me.
Meanwhile, the reward system on Taggr now is actually sustainable, and I find the UI good too. You can upload a 50-megabyte photo and it gets posted directly on chain.
It's not the developer's job to grow the platform for you
Then there's this comment, which is even more ridiculous: "The answer is pretty obvious, the developer and McQuarran cannot grow the platform." The developer is the guy who built the platform. Why is it his responsibility to do all the marketing? McQuarran already did marketing, already bought a lot of the tokens, which helps the price and gets attention, and he went on Blockchain Pill and did a great interview. So the claim that the only two people who can grow it can't is ridiculous. This is a platform where you hold the tokens and you are part business owner of the platform. McQuarran has about 12% of the tokens in his wallet and the developer has about 14%. Each of them has a lot more than I do, but I bought thousands of dollars of tokens too.
What we need to do in this life is start taking personal responsibility. It's not the developer's job or McQuarran's job to grow the platform. It's my job. It's everybody else's job on the platform to grow it too. Yes, if people don't care about having a better social media experience and just keep dumping their time into anything and getting ripped off, then sure, nothing changes. But there is something better available, and I've realized this is my responsibility. And honestly, they're doing a great job already.
The DAO gave me over $1,000 for one video
The developer just made a proposal that gave me 177 Taggr for a video I posted. I put the video up, lots of people bought Taggr and came back into it, and I got 177 Taggr for it, which was over $1,000 as a thank-you for making a video about Taggr. This was after the fact. I had no idea it was coming, and I was shocked it happened. And this is something that can happen for anyone who makes a significant contribution to the business. To bring people over, the DAO can literally mint tokens for you. The developer, or anybody else with Taggr tokens, can make a proposal that says, "Hey, this person did this." So anyone who is currently just getting their time ripped off on X could come over, bring their community along, and especially if you brought thousands of people over, the DAO would probably be really happy and could literally create thousands of dollars of value for you. There's no guarantee up front, but to me there's a huge incentive to actually get involved in Taggr and make this a priority. This is the same on-chain governance I walk through in submitting five SNS DAO proposals on Internet Computer, and if you want to see how I think about all of it, I keep these conversations going in my ICP Crypto playlist.
So these comments saying it's up to two people are ridiculous. This is a thinking issue. We need to take personal responsibility in our lives. Why are you posting on X? Because Elon Musk bought it, and he's one of the richest people in the world? You're posting because, what, he's growing the platform? Elon Musk is not giving me my fair share for what I'm contributing to the platform. It's nuts.
"I love Taggr, but I don't get a lot of interactions"
Here's one of the most common criticisms of Taggr: "I love Taggr and the concept, but it doesn't seem like I get a whole lot of interactions." Why do you need all kinds of interactions on your posts? And here's a better question: are you interacting with other people's posts? When I go on Taggr and look at a post, the developer made a post where there was a ton of conversation on it. Some of the same people saying "I don't get good interactions" aren't interacting much themselves. And what are you getting on X anyway?
Let me actually look at one of these people. I'll go follow this guy on his Taggr page and engage with him. I'll give him the first reaction to his post. He's posting some pictures. He's not getting reactions on a lot of his posts. But then go look at his X profile: it says he's got a thousand followers and he's following 800 people. Compare that to Taggr, where he's following 14 people and has 61 followers. If you look at the ratio, he's doing a lot better on Taggr. There are 61 people who follow him on Taggr and he only follows 14. What's the amount of effort he's putting in? He's resharing all these other posts on X. On one of his X posts he got seven reactions, on another 116. Okay, so he got some more reactions in the short term on X.
But this is why so many of our lives end up being an absolute dumpster fire. We get trapped into this: "Let me just post on X, X tells me 116 people saw this, and I get seven little hearts." Then in the back of your mind you say, "Well, I posted on Taggr and nobody reacted, so I'll just post on X." And then you say, "I love the concept, but I just create to share, and I need a larger audience, and it's difficult."
Reach versus meaningful connections
What you actually need is meaningful connections, and clearly what's happening on X is not meaningful connections most of the time. How do I know? Look at my own profile: I have around 7,000 followers, which is definitely more than average. How many meaningful connections do I have on X? Almost none. I get thousands of impressions, but hardly anyone has actually scheduled a call and said, "I found you on X." Hardly anyone has come over to OpenChat and said, "I found you on X." Hardly anyone has ever come over to my Taggr and said, "I found you on X." Almost everybody in my OpenChat said, "I found you on YouTube."
So if you want meaningful connections, Taggr is a better bet, because we actually have relatively little space in our brains to remember people. What happens on platforms like X is the people with the biggest followings stay in everyone's minds all the time, and all the little people are just feeding and feeding the bigger follower numbers. They feel like there's a bigger community. But if you actually look at this guy's profile, what meaningful connections are happening there? He's clearly giving a lot more on X, but his pinned post only has about four comments. He would almost certainly be better off if he moved over to Taggr, posted on Taggr, and invited everybody he really cares about on X to move over and interact with him there. Instead you have this illusion of a larger community. Yes, there are bigger user numbers, but almost all the smaller people just feed the top and get almost nothing in return.
On a platform like X, you're a little fish in a massive pond, which means you're almost totally irrelevant. On Taggr, you can be a little fish in a little pond, which is a much better deal by comparison, because you're much more relevant in the ecosystem. There's this illusion that "my posts have more numbers on them," and I know this sounds counterintuitive, but to me it's more valuable to have stronger connections with people than to have a bigger reach. This guy has only made 95 posts on Taggr, and he also has no tokens there, which doesn't incentivize actually participating. The same person takes it for granted on X that they have no ownership and that's fine. But Taggr is a platform where you can buy a little bit of it and share in the revenue. If you put the same effort into Taggr, you'd have more meaningful connections. You might have fewer connections overall, but what I'm seeing on Taggr is people making really meaningful connections, getting to know each other, posting back and forth, and commenting on each other's posts.
If I never comment, if I don't have a deeper interaction with you, these shallow impressions and hearts don't mean anything. Our social media system right now is a lot of shallow, meaningless interactions. It's like the difference between hookups and a really solid relationship. Taggr is in a great position to build a really solid relationship and community. So while there's less activity on Taggr, that's because people are dumping their time and energy into shallow relationships and meaningless numbers on X instead of building something more.
"ICP will just outperform Taggr, so why bother?"
Some people think that most likely holding ICP will outperform Taggr, and that's why no one cares. Well, if you look at the Taggr chart, it went up against ICP recently, very quickly. And here's my take: I definitely think ICP will 100x, in my opinion. But imagine the scenario where ICP 100x's. Look at the Taggr price over the last month. I've doubled the ICP I put into Taggr. I bought Taggr near the bottom, and I've doubled my ICP value in it. I have something like 500-plus ICP worth of Taggr right now, at least, and around 1,100 Taggr in my wallet. This is just off a couple of videos and me talking about it a little bit. Very little has happened. Hardly anybody else has done anything. This is off me making a couple of videos.
The market cap right now is around $2 million. That's an absolutely tiny market cap in crypto. So what do you think happens if ICP 100x's and Taggr just stays priced in ICP? Even if Taggr just kept up with ICP, the price would go up to around $650, and the market cap would go up to a couple hundred million. In that case there'd be a lot more activity on Taggr, a lot more people reading posts, commenting, and participating, and it would be a fantastic place to post, chat, and build a community. This is all my own speculation and what I expect, not a promise or financial advice. But to me, you know what's never going to happen? Dumping your time and energy into X is never going to get you anything, whereas if you put your time and energy on Taggr, you could actually help build the value of the token.
My take on the Taggr price and tokenomics
As we've seen in the past, if you go back a bit further, Taggr at one point got up to 3.2 ICP per token. It did dump pretty hard after that, around 97%, but in my view this could easily happen again, especially if ICP doesn't go up that fast. Taggr could easily pump up to 5 to 10 ICP at some point because there's so little Taggr. If you look at the tokens, there are only around 300,000 Taggr, whereas there are 500-something million ICP. So Taggr is thousands of times smaller in terms of the number of tokens, and it's actually close to deflationary right now, because there's a 0.25 Taggr transaction fee every time. If you swap to buy it and then send it out of the swap wallet, that's about a 0.5 total Taggr burn. Right now there's been roughly as much Taggr burned as created. Meanwhile, you actually get paid in ICP for a profit share on the platform.
So yes, about 90% of my portfolio is ICP, but I have about 5% in Taggr, because if Taggr outperforms ICP, I benefit, and I care about investing in something I use myself. It's also a little bit of diversification. I think Taggr has the possibility, especially at the current price, of being worth 1 to 10 ICP per token in the future. That's my opinion based on my own experience, not advice for you. So yes, I have more ICP, but if you want something smaller with bigger potential multipliers, then to me Taggr looks amazing. This is exactly the kind of risk I'm careful about after watching things go wrong elsewhere, which is what I wrote about in the BIL token rug pull on ICP and what it taught me. If you want to follow more of how I think about ICP and projects built on it, you can watch my newest videos in my ICP Crypto playlist.
"The transfer fee was a turnoff"
Blockchain Max says his major turnoff was a crazy transfer fee. The transfer fee on Taggr currently ends up being around $1.50 or so per transaction, and transactions are instantaneous. The fee can be adjusted at any time by the DAO. What's the purpose of it? To minimize people farming it and to create some deflationary pressure. People have been really positive about this same kind of thing on other blockchains. If the price of Taggr got to, say, $600, the transfer fee could be adjusted by the DAO. So it's something that encourages you to think before you use your Taggr. The circle-jerking for Taggr tokens has now been killed off, which is great. Buying the Taggr tokens is tricky at this point because there's so little liquidity, but that also means some people will be able to earn really nice fees by providing liquidity for Taggr, so some people will definitely be drawn to that.
What happened to earlier Taggr investors
Some people have said the Taggr investors before got screwed hard. Well, there were people taking advantage of the token minting system, and the DAO decided to vote in favor of setting the platform up for long-term viability. One reason the price pumped and dumped so much is that people got hyped up on buying it and farming new Taggr. You could buy Taggr and then upvote yourself on another account and get all this Taggr minted. So the price crashed as profit farming got less and less profitable. Now compare that to the same argument people make about ICP investors getting screwed. You have to look at what kind of future you want. To me, I want a future like what they're doing on Taggr now.
Why I believe pay-to-post is the future
Some people object that you have to pay to post. But having a little bit of a paygate to post solves one of the biggest problems on things like X, which is that you don't have to pay to post. Because you don't have to pay to post on X, people just dump all kinds of crap out there, which makes the platform unusable. They aren't thinking about whether it's really worth posting. When I'm posting on Taggr, even though it's a small amount, I think, "Is this really worth sharing?" That discourages spamming, and it makes a business system out of it.
To me, the future of social media, if it's going to be viable at all, is going to be pay-to-post, because free-to-post is extremely exploitative. You get stuck with ads in your face that rip you off with products you don't need, and you get stuck with spammers and bots taking advantage of not having to pay. So this is my response to all the Taggr criticisms I've seen. This is why Taggr and OpenChat are the main social media platforms I use now. If you've been craving a social experience where you actually own a piece of what you build, the best place to keep talking with me about it is right here in the Jerry Banfield Family, where I take one-on-one calls and answer DMs directly.